ASUU Protests Iwu’s INEC Headship …Plans Mass Rally Soon

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to embark on a protest march for the removal of INEC Chairman Prof. Maurice Iwu.

Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie, National President of ASUU, issued the threat on Thursday in Owerri.

He told newsmen that the protest march was one of the decisions taken at the union’s National Executive Council meeting on “State of the Nation,’’ held at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology recently.

“We shall engage in a mass protest to make our point, to ask the Federal Government to remove Iwu,’’ he said.

Awuzie said ASUU would continue to collaborate with the organised labour and civil society organisations in the struggle for the actualisation of the electoral reforms recommended by the Uwais committee.

He said the union had also urged the Federal Government to re-organise INEC to ensure its credibility and efficiency.

Awuzie expressed the union’s concern over the collapse of basic social infrastructure, erosion of the institutional foundation of decision making at all levels and the worsening security situation.

He said the union was worried over the woeful performance of students in the NECO and WAEC as well as the inability of government to squarely address the worsening security situations in Jos and Niger Delta.

Awuzie announced that the Federal Government had yet to grant the university professors 70 years as retirement age.

He said the salaries of members of the union in federal universities for August and September 2009 were still being withheld, contrary to the provisions in the agreement signed by ASUU and government on Oct. 22, 2009.

Awuzie said the sacked 49 lecturers of the University of Ilorin had yet to receive their entitlements from the date of the illegal sack as directed by the Supreme Court judgment.

“All that the university authority had done was just to reinstate them.

“It has yet to pay them their salary arrears and other personal emoluments. It has also not placed them properly in terms of promotion, granting of accumulated leave and other entitlements,’’ he added.