LAUTECH closure: Students plan mass protest January 9

STUDENTS across the country, under the umbrella of Alliance of Nigerian Students against Neo-Liberal Attacks (ANSA), have set aside January 9 to protest the continued industrial impasse which has kept Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) closed for seven months.

A statement issued by the group and signed by its Acting General Secretary, Juwon Sanyaolu, said the “mother of all protests” against the governments of Oyo and Osun states (proprietors of the school) would be held simultaneously in both Ibadan and Osogbo.

The school was shut on June 13, 2016. Members of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) were offering skeletal services till September 18, 2016.

According to Sanyaolu, there were indications that both governments were considering increasing fees as a way of resolving the prolonged workers’ strike, and vowed that the group would mobilise students groups and activists in the country to resist the implementation of such plan.

The statement read in part: “The January 9 mass action is for the outright rejection of imminent fee hike in LAUTECH, adequate funding of the university, immediate reopening of the campus and unconditional reinstatement of the student union on the campus.

“The declaration of the date, as a day of mass action against the aforementioned, was a product of the congress of LAUTECH students which premised its conclusion on the need to mobilise Nigerian students, youths and activists against further attacks that would soon befall tertiary institutions across the country.

“The fact is that fee hike, in times past, has never solved the challenges of underfunding in LAUTECH or any other tertiary institution, rather, it always deprived students from poor background access to affordable education. We, therefore, maintain that fee hike should, under no circumstance, be substituted for adequate funding of education.”