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Valentine Obienyem,
a senior aide to Anambra State governor, Peter Obi on media and
publicity, yesterday described the strike by the South-east lecturers
under the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), as a direct
result of an attempt by lecturers from other parts of the country to
experiment with them before making their own demands.

Mr Obienyem, who
addressed newsmen in Awka yesterday, said although other state
universities were not paying what the federal universities were paying,
the situation in the south east had become overblown to give the
impression that only the south east universities were not paying.

“The rest of the
country are only encouraging the south east to continue agitating so
that once they get what they are asking, they will use it as a
bargaining chip,” he said, adding that the lecturers from the south
east were unintelligently allowing themselves to be so used.

“Why is it that
other state universities such as Rivers and LASU that have same problem
are quietly seeking solution without unnecessary media hype?”

Competing needs

He pointed out that
the agreement on salary was between ASUU and the federal government and
not with the state governments, pointing out that even ASUU President,
Akabueze Awuzie acknowledged that in his press conference two days ago
in Awka, wondered why ASUU were insisting that the state governments
must implement it.

The lecturers had
accused Mr Obi, who is chairman of the forum of south-east governors,
of instigating the refusal of his colleagues to accede to their demand
for better payment structure.

But Mr Obienyem,
who restated the commitment of Mr Obi to education, appealed to
lecturers to remember that there were other competing needs to be
tackled by the governors.

On Mr Awuzie’s
comment on the decay and absence of infrastructure in the south east
universities, Mr Obienyem said that everybody knew that ASUU was after
salary increase and had to bring in other needs to make their case look
good.

He advised ASUU to
first purge itself of the activities of some of their members, which
contributes to the decline in education before they looked for a
scapegoat. He said some of those activities included obsession of some
of the lecturers with sale of poorly prepared handouts, molestation of
students in various ways and what he called poor and incestuous
scholarship.