Chijioke Agwu, Abakaliki
Ebonyi State Governor, Chief David Umahi, has ordered the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Ebonyi State University Abakaliki (EBSU), chapter to call off its warning strike and return to classroom for the interest of the students of the institution.
The Governor in a statement signed by the Secretary to the State Government,Dr. Kenneth Ugbala, on Thursday said he has studied the demands made by the academic union upon which they embarked on the strike action and discovered that the demands were political and fake.
The union had last week embarked on a strike action which they tagged active non-compliance strike action.
The ASSU- EBSU Chapter Chairman, Dr. Ikechukwu Igwenyi, had said the Union decided to embark on the strike because all efforts to make the school management to listen to its demands have failed.
Igwenyi said “all the efforts we have been making to ensure that there is effective communication between ASUU and the management has not yielded fruit and so we decided to embark on what we call active non compliance strike”.
“Our work have so many facets. We render community services, we do research as well as teaching. So, we downed tools on teaching while we carry out our duties in the areas of research and community services, that is what we mean by active noncompliance”,
But Governor Umahi in the statement disagreed with the academic union ,saying that the reasons adduced by them were not enough to embark on strike.
He therefore urged them to call off the strike or government would commence withholding of their salaries and other entitlements.
“Government also has gone through the issues between ASUU and Management and discovered that most of their demands are more political than a genuine demands thereby making Government to see this demand as not enough to make ASUU embark on any strike action”.