BY AKINWALE ABOLUWADE, IBADAN
Indication has emerged that the Academic Staff Union of Universities may soon embark on strike as a result of the failure by the Federal Government to implement an agreement which it signed with the union late last year.
As things stand, ASUU has given the FG till tomorrow (Tuesday) to reach out before it activates the procedure of embarking on strike.
The President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, was quoted in an interview with The PUNCH that the FG was no longer responding to its demands.
Among other things, the FG and ASUU disagreed on the poor funding of the universities and the discrepancies around the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.
The union developed the University Transparency and Accountability Solution to replace the controversial IPPIS.
To this end, it had meetings with the Ministries of Finance, Education, Labour and Employment, and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, but it had yet to be implemented.
Recall that the union suspended its strike on December 24, 2020 following an agreement between it and the FG. However, after a meeting with the FG on August 2, 2021, Osodeke said that the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency insisted that UTAS must be re-presented to the end users.
At the meeting, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, told ASUU that the N22billion earned allowance captured in the 2021 supplementary budget would soon be accessed by university workers.
Osodeke said in an interview with The PUNCH that the FG had stopped reaching out to ASUU and had failed to implement the agreement reached.
He said, “The government has refused to reach out to us. Government officials have stopped. In fact, they don’t take our calls again. Nigerians should tell the government to do what they agreed to do.
“We signed an agreement and even in May, we reached a final agreement; this is August and nothing has been implemented. Does it make any sense? We are giving them till the end of August and after that, we start the procedures.”
