Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has responded to the federal government’s unwillingness to meet its requests.

Previous regimes, especially the military, were more sensitive to the predicament of professors, according to Osodeke.

On Thursday, January 5, Osodeke revealed some of their experiences under military regimes while speaking at the launching of 50 tertiary textbooks written by Nigerian writers under the sponsorship of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in Abuja.

He said;

“Thank you very much for this honourable minister and all of us who are present here today. I want to thank my colleagues for raising the issues and I think it is very important. I will just say a little thing about what is TETFUND and how did it originate?

“In 1992, the union was on strike and negotiating; how we used to do then few years ago with Obafemi and co, and when we finished, the government said how can we fund it and we said challenge us, we will tell you how to fund this agreement. And they challenged ASUU, it didn’t take three days and we came up with this idea of TETFUND, which was accepted by government, then military.

“I have seen that the military are even more sympathetic. Then TETFUND came into place. The decree was signed 1993. ASUU had to go on strike the third time to ensure that TETFUND board is funded and the money was released.”