Thr National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has rejected the industrial Court Ruling, ordering the university lecturers to end 7 months old strike, describing it as a black market judgement.
The NANS PRO, Giwa Yisa Temitope made this known in a statement.
The statement reads: Our attention has been drawn to a court judgment mandating the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to call of 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 crisis.
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.
Uncovered.ng recalls that Justice Polycap Hamman of the National Industrial Court had issued the order for suspension of the strike while ruling in an application filed by the Federal Government asking that the University teachers be compelled to go back to work pending the resolution of their demands for better working conditions.
Similarly, The ASUU National President
Emmanuel Osodeke said during a parley with Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila on Tuesday, that the union cannot be compelled to return to classes.
Osodeke likened the scenario to a court order to force a medical doctor to treat a patient.
He maintained that ASUU remained blameless about the closure of public universities.
He warned that the universities, which account for over 95 per cent intake of students, faced the risk of depreciating to the level of public primary schools within the next 10 years.
