The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has shelved its planned national strike until further notice.
ASUU President, Emmanuel Osodeke made this known in a communique issued at the end of its emergency National Executive Council, NEC, meeting at its National Secretariat, the University of Abuja on Saturday.
The meeting was meant to review the level of government’s implementation of the FGN-ASUU Memorandum of Action, of December 23, 2020, and other related matters.
The University Teachers’ ultimatum demanding the government’s action had expired on Friday, necessitating the emergency meeting of Saturday.
ASUU says it has taken full account of efforts by student union bodies, leading media practitioners and organizations, religious and opinion leaders, frontline
traditional rulers, civil society organizations, and other interest groups within and outside Nigeria to make the government address all outstanding issues arising from the December 2020 Memorandum of Action.
It, therefore, resolved to review the situation at a later date and decide on the next line of action.
The National Executive Council of ASUU noted that the government has failed to address all the issues raised in the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement and subsequent MoUs and MoAs
ASUU says it is worried over the spirited efforts of government agents to reduce the demands of ASUU to a regime of intermittent payment of watered-down revitalization fund and release of distorted and grossly devalued earned Academic Allowances.
The Union condemns what it describes as the surreptitious moves to dismiss its demands on the review of the National Universities Commission, NUC, Act to curb the proliferation of universities by State Governments who are not funding the existing ones, adopting the University Transparency Accountability Solutions, UTAS, with concurrent discontinuance of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, IPPIS, and distortion in salary payment as well as the release of accumulated promotion arrears.
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ASUU adds that it will not relent in demanding improvement in the welfare and conditions of service of its members.
ASUU added that it shall however resist any attempt to blackmail the union and derail its patriotic struggle for a productive university system by official propaganda founded on tokenism and crumb-sharing.
It says it regrets that the Federal Government has turned its back on the plan to set up an inter-ministerial committee to review the draft Renegotiated 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement to enable the parties to conclude a negotiation process that began in March 2017.
ASUU says it has reviewed the letter by the Minister of Labour and Employment conveying the report of the “integrity test” on the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, by the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, through the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, and wonders why it would take more than one year to get the needed feedback on a home-grown solution at a time Nigeria is yearning for “local content”.
The University Teachers’ Union adds that it is fully prepared to address all the technical observations made by NITDA in order to make UTAS happen and hopes that the National Universities Commission and other agencies of government would promptly respond to issues that concern them in the NITDA’s report to pave way for speedy migration to UTAS and spare Nigerian universities of the evil effects of the IMF/World Bank-engineered IPPIS.
Editor :Anoyoyo Ogiagboviogie
