Crisis splits ASUU in UNIZIK

Another faction of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, known as Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, Progressives has emerged at the institution.
This new twist has worsened the crisis that has been rocking the academic body in the school for over sometime now.

Addressing a news conference at the School of Post Graduate Studies of the university, the group, made up of professors and other academic staff, said that as stakeholders of the institution, they would not watch the local ASUU drag the name of UNIZIK to the mud.
Speaking on behalf of the group, Professor Maduabuchukwu Uduko, lamented a situation where the institution’s ASUU dragged the university to court without consulting its members.
He observed that the action was capable of denting the image of the university.
“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”, he said.
Continuing, Prof Uduko said “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 day in 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 factional group observed that the perceived confrontational stance of ASUU was a result of 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.
The group threatened to impeach the leadership of ASUU if it failed to retrace its steps.
Reacting to the claims of the new group, the chairman of ASUU, Professor Ike Odimegwu described it as a misnomer, insisting that there was only one ASUU in the country with only one chapter in an institution.