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Today, I feel ashamed of telling people that I am an ASSU member because of the activities of some ASSU members. Some years back, despite the fact that ASSU members are not rich, it was a profession of honour. Today, the reverse is the case. Let us take a look at the reason of members embarking on the ongoing strike, “UNI-ILORIN 49”. The truth is that ASSU has now become a Yoruba ‘score settling tool’. The former President, Olusegun Obasanjo being an undiluted Yoruba man understood the politics of ASSU and UNI-ILORIN 49. And that was the reason why he refused to give audience to the union when he was the president. As far as I am concerned, it is only an irresponsible government that would allow itself to be intimidated by this union on the issue in question. President Yar’adua has made it clear that his administration is based on Rule of Law. So, ASSU should stop pursing the shadow and take her case to court if there is any case. In any case, we ASSU members know where the union’ s executives are moving towards. The next thing they will tell us is that UNI-ILORIN 49 need some money from the union for members of their families. This will be follow by asking the bursary units of universities to deduct from sources five thousand (=N=5,000) naira from every member of the union for the sustenance of UNI-ILORIN 49 and members of their families. President Yar’adua take note of this strategy being adopted to extort hard earned money from ASSU members and nip this plan in the bud before it comes to fruition At this point, I am appealing to each one of us (ASSU members) to go home, think, reason and come out with our grievances with the government of the day, rather than using UNI-ILORIN 49 as camouflage as is presently the case with our union. For how long are we going to keep on pursing shadow instead of the real image? These UNI-ILORIN 49 members have been working since their university administration terminated their appointments, and now the union is saying they should be recalled and paid for the years they have not been working with University of Ilorin. Is that not fraud? Today, it is illegal to work in two different places for the same government of Nigeria, be it federal or state. For me and other law abiding members of ASSU, strike is uncalled for based on UNI-ILORIN 49 and we are not on strike and can never ne on strike for this reason. I am therefore using this medium to invite EFCC to investigate the activities of ASSU executives at all levels because these people for long have been deducting our monies without anything to show for that. Again, government should come up with more proactive policies to allow university lecturers to either belong to ASSU or not. That will go a long way in curbing the activities of the union
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