ASUU slams UNIOSUN over virtual matriculation

Opeyemi Adelere

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has faulted the virtual matriculation conducted by the Osun State University, describing it as a charade.

The Osun State University had organised a virtual matriculation for its new students due to the prevalence of COVID-19, which resulted in the closure of schools across the country. The ceremony had in attendance, the principal officers of the university led by the Vice Chancellor, Professor Labode Popoola.

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ASUU, in a statement signed by its Ibadan Zonal Coordinator, Professor Made Adejumo, alleged that the Vice-Chancellor was aiming to use the virtual matriculation to get financial favour from the Federal Government.

Adejumo said, “In the UNIOSUN’s Vice-Chancellor’s heart of heart, can he honestly beat his chest that all the students of that University have the wherewithal to key into his e-learning platform?

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“More so, given the fact that the majority of the students are from very humble backgrounds, is this policy, not a ploy to shut out such students from accessing teaching and learning interaction?

“Mr Vice-Chancellor should come out clearly to tell the nation what his real motives are? We suspect the motivation here is financial rather than altruistic. Is this another antic to undermine ASUU that the VC knows is currently on strike?

“To this, we say, anyone who works at cross-purposes with our Union’s patriotic struggle to improve funding of public universities is an enemy of the people. Anyone, in the guise of being a Vice-Chancellor, who subverts the current struggle of the union, through organising a phoney teaching arrangement, which the Nigerian public universities cannot effectively deliver, is living in self-deceit and a fool’s paradise.

“But for ASUU’s historic struggles, will characters like Prof. Labo Popoola have any meaningful public university to preside over as Vice-Chancellors? For the avoidance of doubt, this struggle will succeed like others before it to the eternal shame of characters in the mould of the Vice-Chancellor under reference here.”

ASUU stated that its ongoing strike action was to make the government fund and revitalise infrastructure in universities, including ICT, adding that most government owned universities have weak to non-existent ICT infrastructure, and as such, could not meet the demands of online learning.

The union said that government must fund ICT infrastructure if it is interested in e-learning delivery, POST COVID-19.