Student association protest against lingering ASUU strike in Calabar, threathens to truncate 2023 elections

The City of Calabar was thrown into a frenzy when the National Association of Nigerian Students – NANS – in Cross River State staged a peaceful protest against the 108 days long strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU on Thursday.

The act according to NANS is to express students’ displeasure with the industrial action by their teachers which started on February 14, 2022.

The students who marched from the University of Calabar main gate causing gridlocks on major roads in the Calabar metropolis chanted solidarity songs and carried placards bearing inscriptions like “End ASUU Strike Now” “NO SCHOOL NO ELECTION” and “EDUCATION IS OUR RIGHT” et cetera. The caravan thorofare Mary Slessor Avenue and terminated at the Federal Secretariat along the busy Murtala Muhammed Highway escorted by security personnel to maintain orderliness and avoid chaos.

Speaking to LENS Reporter on condition of anonymity, some of the students lamented their frustration over the continued stay at home when their mates and colleagues in private universities have completed their programmes and graduated in record time.

Others used the occasion to vent their anger on the ruling party APC for failing to address the 2009 agreement entered into with ASUU but have the guts instead to raise over N2b from the selling of presidential and nomination forms which if channeled into resolving the impasse would have gone a long way.

Also speaking, a parent wondered why Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Head of State and owner of a private university does not wade into the matter by urging the administration he mid-wived to end the ASUU strike.

By: Archibong Emmanuel
(Snr. Reporter)