Lecturers under the aegis of the Congress of Universities Academic (CONUA), has urged Vice-Chancellors of public universities to recall students for academic activities.
The breakaway faction of ASUU, said its members across the nation are not on strike and are ready to lecture.
The National Secretary of CONUA and lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Dr Henri Oripeloye, made this known in a press statement released during the press conference held at Federal University Oye Ekiti.
Oripeloye said that, “should VCs recall their students now, academic activities will resume without any rancour in public varsities as many lecturers are ready to resume since they have complied with government’s directive on IPPIS”.
The statement was titled, “ASUU: Breakaway faction begs VCs to recall students for academic activities” quoted Orilpeloye as saying “there are those (lecturers) who don’t belong to any Union and are willing to teach”.
He further said; “We reject in strong terms, the claims that we are members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities. We are an independent union on university campuses in Nigeria.
“We commend the National University Commission for directing the opening of Universities nationwide. We want our universities to be reopened so that they will not be left behind in the scheme of things.
“CONUA believes in constructive and objective engagement with the government rather than strike. One of CONUA’s dreams is that strike action as a weapon to force government’s attention should become history. We don’t know anything about UTAS, we believe in fruitful interaction with the government and to achieve our requests from the government.
“CONUA has no conflict with ASUU. The two unions only differ in terms of philosophy and ideology which is reflecting in their approach to getting the government to accede to requests. And this is being done on the issue of IPPIS as CONUA has been interacting with the government on how to solve many of the problems that have been identified with the platform.”
