Benin based Civil Rights Activist and President of the One Love Foundation, Chief Patrick Osagie Eholor, has slammed the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed.
Talking about the ASUU, Chief Eholor said: “the strike by ASUU has become a recurring decimal. It is really very unfortunate. I will describe them as ASUU in the day and politicians at night which is to the detriment of the students.
“It baffles me that there is no union in Nigeria that has integrity starting from the NLC(Nigeria Labour Congress). That’s why recently I took them to court, looking for a way to see how we can disband their functionality because they don’t function.
“I feel the students have to rise above ASUU because if the students continue to allow ASUU to mediate for them there is going to be a serious problem in academics. The ASUU has not been useful to themselves or the students.
“How can you flip flop whenever you bargain with the government? You let the students go for lectures for three months then you disorganise everything once again. You know that a lot of criminalities and the likes eg ritualism, kidnapping, prostitution, illicit drugs, cultism etc are going on in the society.
“The more you don’t engage the students positively in the campus, the more they derail and do other things that are illegal. I feel that the ASUU should be disbanded as they’re not responsible. For a negotiation to be effective they need to hold on to their argument, ensure that they get what they want before they back down. It is wrong to make demands in the day time and meet politicians at night to collect money.”
On the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed’s comparison of the Canada truck drivers protest on Covid-19 vaccine with the endsars nationwide protests in Nigeria, the Canadian-Nigerian lambasted him, saying “Lai Mohammed has no justification to say anything negative about the truck drivers protest in Canada.
“In the situation in Canada, the Canadian government gave kudos to the protesters and all those arrested were released without anybody paying bail before been released.
“So, what is Lai Mohammed’s justification for making such a comparison?”
On the centenarian Nonye Josephine Ezeanyaeche who has thrown in her hat to contest the 2023 presidential election, the civil rights activist gave her kudos and promised to give her his support but doubt if the powers that be would let her have a level playing ground to flourish especially considering that the country’s political system has been heavily monetized.
