ASUU expels Unilorin lecturers

By Sulaimon Olanrewaju - 29.02.2008

The leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has expelled all University of Ilorin lecturers from the union.

Speaking in an interview with the Nigerian Tribune, Dr. Abdullahi Sule-Kano, ASUU president, said “as far as we are concerned, the only members of ASUU in University of Ilorin are the 49 lecturers disengaged from their jobs in 2001 in violation of the non-victimisation clause in the June 2001 FGN-ASUU agreement.”

According to the ASUU boss, the decision to expel all the lecturers in the university stemmed from their attitude to the plight of the dismissed lecturers.

Sule-Kano said the National Executive Council of ASUU met at the weekend to review its one-week warning strike and the protest march to the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Assembly.

The ASUU boss said “NEC was astonished by the view credited to the Visitor to the University of Ilorin, President Umaru Yar’Adua, that an out of court settlement would amount to violation of the rule of law. NEC affirmed that an out of court settlement is a legally legitimate practice, which ends up with the court’s pronouncing as its judgment the terms of settlement as agreed by the parties in dispute.”

Sule-Kano said the position of NEC remained that “the Visitor to the University of Ilorin, to correct the injustice of disengagement of UNILORIN 49, has the power to intervene through the Governing Council to the University of Ilorin without violating either the rule of law or university autonomy.”

The ASUU boss called on all concerned about the university system to put an end to the injustice done to the UNILORIN 49 by prevailing on the government to recall the people through an out of court settlement as agreed between ASUU’s representatives and government on June 26, 2007.