THE National Strike
Coordinating Committee,
NSCC, comprising of
principal officers and Zonal
Coordinators of Academic
Staff Union of Universities, ASUU will be meeting
Saturday to take stock of
the ongoing strike embarked by the union that is entering the fourth
months. Meantime, ASUU said that it was not under any
pressure to call-off the strike despite what it
called sponsored protests and rallies against the
union, stressing that before the union decided to
embark on the strike, it holistically took objective
assessment of the situation. One of the branch Chairmen of ASUU and member
of NSCC who spoke exclusively to Saturday
Vanguard on the condition of anonymity said that
the meeting will take place in Ondo state and that
there would be a situation report including the
meeting representatives of ASUU had with the Federal government last week’s Friday. He said,”We are meeting tomorrow, National
Strike Coordinating Committee. Tomorrow is
arrival. Our Principal officers and Zonal
Coordinators met with government last week
Friday, one week today, so we want to discus the
outcome of the meeting, after that we will now meet.” Commenting on the plethora of protests by
different groups over the strike which could be
mounting pressure on the union to call off the
strike, he said that “There is no pressure on us.
We look at things objectively and remember that
even me as I am talking we cannot suspend the strike. “We have to get inputs from the branches that is
why our strike is always very tight, because before
we declared the strike, we have collected inputs
from all branch officers in the universities in
Nigeria, we collated it, discussed it extensively for
two days before we declared the strike. “And if there is any offer made by government,
we have to look at it, that is the principal officers
ten of them in number, the zonal coordinators
who take over functions of NEC during the strike,
so, they will look at what government has offered,
brief us the branch chair persons then it is at this point we will now know whether to convene an
emergency NEC to look at it holistically. “By the time they are briefing us, they will also
ask us to brief our committee members and take
the issue to the congress, it is not a one man
show, all these ones they are talking about
politics it is not true, the process right from the
least of all the lecturers to the highest that is the professor from each branch, we collate all their
responses, it is only when they advice us to
suspend that we suspend, it is not just one man
show.” He explained that during strike situation, the
National Strike Coordinating Committee
comprising of principal officers and zonal
coordinators always take over the functions of
NEC, adding, “every single week, the zonal
coordinators will take the information to the various branches who will now take the
information to congress, collating information
from congress, the branch chairman will take it
back to the zonal coordinator, the zonal
coordinator takes it back to NSCC, the reason is
that NEC has the larger component, we are many.” He said that the reason behind allowing the
smaller number of officers to meet during strike
situation was to cut cost. “Why NEC cannot meet during the strike is
because of cost, we are more in number. In NEC
we have over 100 people, but NSCC will be
between 10 and 20, so it is manageable, we have
a channel of communication.” All attempts made to call the National President of
ASUU, Dr. Nasir Fagge failed as he neither picked
calls put across his GSM line nor replied the text
message sent to him.
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