UPDATE: ASUU faction emerges at UNIZIK

THE crisis rocking Nnamdi Azikiwe University's branch of Academic
Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, took another dimension Thursday
with the emergence of a faction, known as ASUU Nnamdi Azikiwe
University Progressives.

The group, consisting of many professors and other academic staff,
said at a crowded news conference at the School of Post Graduate
Studies of the university, that as stakeholders in the institution,
they would not watch the local ASUU drag the name of UNIZIK to the
mud.

Spokesman of the group, Professor Maduabuchukwu Uduko, lamented a
situation where the institution's ASUU dragged the university to court
without consulting members, adding that the action was capable of
denting the image of the university.
Uduko said: "The activities of the local ASUU have beclouded the
edifying status and integrity of Nnamdi Azikiwe University and
insulted the positive public perception and intelligibility about the
place of the institution in Nigeria.

" In consequence, ASUU has become divided against itself and to
forestall its festering wounds from degenerating into mortal death of
quality assurance standard for which the university is reputed to be,
a group of progressive professors and academics is now at the center
stage to defend and sustain the reputation of the university.

"Barely six months after the resuscitation of ASUU in this university
more than a decade of fallowness, its leadership has denigrated and
contradicted itself, undermined the good intentions of ASUU at the
national level and dispossessed its credibility in its quest to
discredit the management and destroy UNIZIK.

"In its confrontational agenda, it boycotted the senate council
election of 16th April, 2013 and fixed a factional meeting same dayin
an apparent showdown with the university authority, staff and
students.

"We stand by the vice chancellor, Professor Boniface Egboka's legacies
in the university and its relentless efforts to build a formidable
institution in a team work unsurpassed in the history of the
university."

The group attributed the confrontational stance of ASUU to what it
described as the inordinate ambitions of vested interests within and
outside the university who were already fighting for the office of
vice chancellor of UNIZIK which would become vacant in June, 2014.
It warned that if the leadership of ASUU failed to retrace its steps,
it stood the risk of facing an impeachment.

However, reacting to the position of ASUU progressives, the chairman
of ASUU, Professor Ike Odimegwu described the emergence of the group
as a misnomer, adding that there is only one ASUU in the country and
there is only charter for ASUU.

#dem wan control our school so dat we go dey follo strike/ STORY!!