Police stop ASUU street protest in Bayelsa

The police on Tuesday continued their
nationwide clampdown on street protests
organised by the Academic Staff Union of
Universities.
This time it was in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State,
where the Niger Delta University’s chapter of
the union was prevented by the police from
holding a public rally to protest the Federal
Government’s refusal to implement the 2009
agreement signed by both parties.
The Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr.
Hilary Opara, was said to have issued an order
to the leadership of ASUU-NDU preventing any
form of public protest by the union.
The order, however, allowed the aggrieved
university lecturers to hold their protest within
the university’s Law Faculty in Yenagoa.
The placard-carrying lecturers soon converted
their protest to a prayer session where they
took turns to “cast and bind” all the spirits that
had prevented the government from honoring
the agreement.
The lecturers also sought divine intervention to
all the cases of blackmail and intimidation
against the union by the Federal Government.
Chairman of ASUU-NDU, Beke Sese, who
addressed the rally, also disclosed that the
Chief Security Officer (CSO) to Governor Seriake
Dickson interrogated him few hours to the
planned protest.
Some of the placards displayed by the lecturers
bore messages such as, “Not every child can
go to Ghana to study,” “Agreement is
Agreement,” “Government save our
universities,” “Poor people’s children need
universities,” “Can your child afford to go to
Ghana and Malaysia, if no then join ASUU to
better our universities.”
Sese said the 17-week old strike was being
sustained by ASUU’s collective resolve to stem
the downward trend government had subjected
public education to.
He said the government was “systematically
destroying public education through mindless
neglect and near total abandonment.”
He also observed that some opposition
politicians had capitalised on the strike to cast
aspersions on the government and thereby
trivialising ASUU’s genuine struggle.
Sese said ASUU struggles had been driven by
legitimate causes rather than regional, ethnic or
any other political considerations.
He said the on-going strike has presented the
government a golden opportunity to make
history by revitalizing public universities in
Nigeria.