The National Association of Nigeria Students has rejected the judgement of the industrial court that ordered the Academic Staff Union of Universities to resume back to school after the 7month-old ongoing strike.
Recall that, yesterday the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) charged the lecturers to call off the strike.
The judge in charge, Justice Polycarp reiterated that the ongoing strike has breached section 18(1)(2) of the Trade Dispute Act.
While reacting to the judgement of the court, the National Public Relation Officer of NANS, Giwa Yisa Temitope in a statement said the ruling is a “black market judgement”.
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In his words, Temitope explained that the ruling betrayed equity because the Federal Government has no right to drag the union to court.
He noted that the only solution to the strike Action is for the Government to meet up with the agreement they had with the union to fund education properly.
His words “Our attention has been drawn to the news of a court judgment mandating the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to call off its 7 month strike. As an association, we feel disturbed to read the news of the judgment because we believe that it betrays equity.
“Ordinarily, the Federal Government is not meant to have dragged ASUU to court. But, the fact that they had to drag ASUU to court is a signal that this government cannot handle the crisis.
And, we want to state categorically that the court cannot force members of ASUU back to lecture theatres.“
And, as it stands today, with that court judgment, we maintain that the court has not resolved the problem and we reject the judgment in strong terms.
The court could have said that the Federal Government should go and pay rather than say that lecturers who are on strike should go back to classrooms.”
We were expecting the court to have understood that lecturers are on contract of personal service hence, they cannot be compelled to render a service they don’t want to render.“
The only remedy to this strike action is for the Federal Government to accede to the demands of ASUU which the government willingly entered into with them and properly fund education.”
