The Academic Staff Union of Ladoke Akintola University has insisted on continuing their strike action even as the students of the institution have resumed for studies after a directive by the university management.

A circular distributed by management of LAUTECH and signed by Jacob Agboola, instructed all academic and non-academic staff to resume on Friday, however, lecturers of the institution are yet to resume as the had vowed not to resume on Friday even when students resume, CEOAfrica gathered.

The chairman of ASUU, LAUTECH Chapter, Biodun Olaniran, said that the Oyo and Osun state governments were not serious with ensuring full resumption of the school.

He said “The truth is that there have been no efforts to ensure that we resume; students who have resumed are only here to play and really we will not resume until our demands are met,” he said. “We have said until our demands are met, we will not resume and that is what we are doing today.

“If the students stay in school for one or two weeks, I don’t know what they will be doing, until we get a directive from our national body after our demands have been met, we remain on strike.”

He said that lecturers received only a month salary out of the two months promised. “We have received just one month with a promise to pay the remaining one month today or tomorrow. Our demand is not about salary, even if we receive the alert, we will not call off the strike,” Mr Olaniran stated.

One of the demands of ASUU is a letter of commitment from the owner states stating how the university would be funded and how salaries would be paid.

However, the Oyo government, speaking on behalf of its Osun counterpart, said it cannot write such letter.

The Senior Assistant on Youths and Students Affairs to the Oyo State Governor, Bolaji Afeez, said “We have met all the demands of ASUU and what they are doing now looks like it has a political undertone, if they are not comfortable with the way things are going, they should resign, is it a must to work there? There are many persons looking for same job.

“They are asking for a letter of commitment and we cannot write it, it is not their business to start asking how we want to fund the varsity, it is like asking the Chief Executive Officer of a company how he wants to run his company. Who does that?” he queried.

The Public Relations Officer of LAUTECH, Lekan Fadeyi, said “LAUTECH has ordered resumption, the date cannot change and management is trying to put things in place.”