Fashola Stresses Need For Peaceful Co-Existence As LASU Unions Protest

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Aug 31, 2009 - Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), Monday stressed the need for peaceful co-existence and harmony within the academic institutions in the State.

Governor Fashola made the remark when members of the Lagos State University (LASU) Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) took their protest against the alleged highhandedness of the institution’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Hussein Abdul-Lateef to his office at Lagos House, Ikeja.

Governor Fashola told the protesting members that it is only within the purview of peace and harmony that the aims of the Government within the contract of their conditions of service could be met.

He appealed to the members to understand that the problem of leadership is not an easy one, pointing out that all human beings have their limitations and styles peculiar to them.

He declared, “Be that as it may, we must work together and truly nobody is perfect, nobody can please everyone of us, and even the Most Perfect One – God Himself – has not pleased all of us because some of us are still waiting to get something from Him, although we cannot protest”.

“I think that we must understand that leadership is not easy; having to be the head of such diverse, such intelligent, such enlightened people and make decisions to please everybody will not be easy. And I think we should bring the management of the University, the Governing Council and the Vice Chancellor himself to a table where we could sit down and work through the issues”, the Governor said.

Promising to go through the representations the unions made to him, Governor Fashola assured the members that before the close of business Tuesday, he would reach out to the authorities within the university to see the grey areas and what could be straightened out immediately, what would need more time to be dealt with and what will need a longer time to resolve.

Thanking the members for the peaceful manner they conducted themselves, the Governor said, “Once you agree that you don’t expect a magic wand; things don’t happen by magic, it happens by process, I think we will find a common ground”, adding that sooner rather than later, “all of the things that agitate your minds would be dealt with and we would be back to familiar friendly territory”.

Earlier, while presenting their protest, Chairman of the University’s chapter of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Ms. Agnes Sessi, called on the Government to come to their rescue “due to the victimization, harassment and intimidation from the highest level in LASU”, adding: “The Vice Chancellor has refused to listen to the yearnings of the people and many papers have been written to the Governing Council to the extent that his policies in the last four years have been drastic”.

According to her “for the last two months, the Vice Chancellor of the University has banned the activities of NASU and SSANU in the University.

In his own submission, Chairman of NASU, Mr. Jubril Yakub said the union had been borne the inadequacies of the Vice-Chancellor in the last four years because of the members are partners in progress with the State Government and would not want to put a spanner in the wheel of progress.