Military govt showed more sympathy for lecturers – ASUU President

He made this observation while speaking at the unveiling of 50 tertiary textbooks published by Nigerian authors under the sponsorship of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in Abuja on Thursday, January 5, 2023.

Osodeke, who described TETFund as a brainchild of ASUU, commended the agency for its transformative strides in Nigeria’s higher education sector.

While commenting on the ‘no work no pay’ policy invoked by the Federal Government against striking lecturers, which has resulted in eight months of unpaid salaries, the ASUU president urged Nigerians to intensify pressure on the government to save tertiary education from collapse.

Recounting how the union’s demands were addressed by the military government, Osodeke hinted that lecturers enjoyed more sympathy back then compared to the current civilian government.

Osodeke’s words: “Thank you very much for this honourable minister and all of us who are present here today. I want to thank my colleagues for raising the issues and I think it is very important. I will just say a little thing about what is TETFUND and how did it originate?”

“In 1992, the union was on strike and negotiating how we use to do then few years ago with Obafemi and co, and when we finished, the government said how can we fund it and we said challenge us, we will tell you how to fund this agreement. And they challenged ASUU, it didn’t take 3days and we came up with this idea of TETFUND, which was accepted by government then military. I have seen that the military are even more sympathetic… Then TETFUND came into place. The decree was signed 1993. ASUU had to go on strike the third time to ensure that TETFUND board is funded and the money was released.”