•ASUU national president, Prof. Abiodun Ogunyemi
From WOLE BALOGUN, Ado Ekiti
A University Professor and Guardian Columnist, Professor Tony Afejuku, has said that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has lost focus and jettisoned the purpose for which the association was formed by the founding fathers.
Afejuku rated the current performance of ASUU very low in comparison with what obtained during the tenures of the union’ s founding fathers, saying that ASUU of the days of the likes of Dr Dipo Fasina, Prof.Atahiru Jega and Professor Asobie had selfless and genuine ambition in engaging stakeholders, especially the government and University managements on issues affecting its members.
Afejuku who said this against the background of endless bickering between FUOYE chapter of ASUU of the management of the institution, cautioned against such unwholesome practices.
He lamented that such glorious era was gone, saying: “ASUU should be a team of intellectual intelligentsia who engage government with a special interest to fight for members’ cause as lecturers but many of them now have their partisan, parochial interest unlike during our time.
ASUU under Dipo Fashina wasn’t like what the current ASUU are doing. Now, they have lost their bearing, they have lost everything. ”
The Professor of English at the University of Benin, made the scathing remarks on ASUU while while fiekding queetions from reporters after delivering the lecture of the Second Combined Convocation ceremony of the Federal University Oye-Ekiti,
He urged ASUU at all levels to retrace their steps and refocus its energies on issues that could benefit their members rather than engage in unnecessary bickering with the management of their institutions.
Afejuku warned that the ASSU might lose its relevance unless it avoid partisanship and brinkmanship.
FUOYE’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Kayode Soremekun, who hosted the lecture, said that FUOYE has blazed the trail as the first to be speaking to the issues of Nigeria at sixty.
“What we are doing is to reflect on where we are, where we are coming from and where we are going in this country because we see things, hear things that we have not heard before.
