By Tony Okafor
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, COOU, has opted out of the looming strike being proposed by university teachers
nation-wide.
Addressing newsmen at the COOU, Igbariam Campus, the Interim Chairman of the union , Prof Osita, Chiaghanam
said the teachers would not embark on any strike at a time they were expecting a new visitor, the Anambra State Governor-elect, Prof Chukwuma Soludo
He said, “The university community, especially the academic staff in Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU) is hereby placed on red alert to beware of a sinister and wicked plot by enemies of peace and merchants of doom to invade the university and ply their trade of blackmail, distortion, disruption and destruction.
”The latest plot being bandied by the hatchet men of a ruinous dark past as ASUU-COOU reconciliation congress is nothing but a well-rehearsed gangup to recruit sympathisers to feather their self-warming nest of infamy. Sensing that their mission is dead-on-arrival as usual, the meddlesome interlopers have resorted to mudslinging, cheap blackmail and arm twisting just to make an in-road into the conscience of a few unsuspecting members of the university community.
”Make no pretense about it, the only goal of these sly invasionists and their cohorts is to truncate the industrial harmony in our university and erode all gains of the university’s stable academic calendar,’ he said.
”The marauders must be told in clear terms that COOU is a community of people of honour committed to the best ideals of responsible unionism.
”It is an old fashioned single story for the self-serving czars of stomach infrastructure to signpost nonpayment of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) and Pensions at a time the university is reaping the gains of having a visionary management that courageously manned up to the ruins of the university’s past and changed the narratives for good.
Continuing, Chiaghanam said they were for peace and progress of the University.
”Truth be told, before the advent of Professor Greg Nwakoby as the Vice Chancellor of our great university, the university was borrowing money to pay salaries. Not only did he stop the borrowing culture, he cleared all the debts running close to a billion Naira. As expected, the beneficiaries and commission-earners of the debt era went on rampage but could not prevail.
