CEOAFRICA gathered that a troop of anti-riot policemen on Friday, disrupted the planned public demonstration by lecturers at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, in Abia State.

According to the report, the lecturers who were dressed in black T-shirts, gathered on the campus for the take off of the protest, marched from the university pavilion to the campus main gate, where they were stopped by the policemen.

The Chairman of the union, Uzochukwu Onyebinama, who addressed the newsmen on the scene, said the protest was intended to inform the public that the four-month-old strike by ASUU was not politically-motivated.

He further advised that if the federal government is saying that the strike is politically-motivated, let it implement the 2009 agreement it reached with ASUU and see if the strike will continue.

Mr. Onyebinama decried the poor state of hostels for the growing population of students in the nation’s public universities and the lack of equipment for effective teaching and learning, emphasizing that no university in the country had received the N100 billion which the federal government claimed to have released for infrastructural development.

He also expressed worry about the dilapidated state of the lecture halls and the lack of basic amenities such as water and electricity in most of the government-owned universities in the country.

The chairman further stated that the industrial action was intended to arrest further decay in the education system.

However, a cross-section of the lecturers decried the heavy presence of the police to stop the protest, describing it as a breach of their fundamental human rights.