Strike: ASUU Demands Action As Fed Govt Sets Timeline For Implementation Of Agreements

The meeting between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has again ended with the lecturers asking the government to act on its demands.

The Federal Government fixed a timeline of six weeks for the new committee set up by the Federal Ministry of Education to round off everything on the conditions of service for the university lecturers.

President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, at the resumed meeting with fedyeral Government team on Tuesday in Abuja, said all ASUU members, students and Nigerians wanted to see was action from the government.

The ASUU leader said its members want to see the federal government release money for revitalisation, pay the earned academic allowances, put a stop to proliferation of universities among others.

He said the money that ought to have been used to fund education was being lost to other countries.

The ASUU leader called for a declaration of emergency in the sector to solve the problem.

Prof Osodeke: “The education sector in Nigeria is in crisis and money is being lost in the primary, secondary and tertiary education levels.”

Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige at the end of the marathon meeting on Tuesday night, expressed hope that ASUU would call off its ongoing four-week warning strike this week.

Ngige told reporters that the meeting agreed on many things and put timelines for the implementation of the agreements.

The Minister said ASUU agreed to go back to its members with the government offers and report back to him before the end of the week.

He said that many of the items in the 2020 Memorandum of Action (MOA) had been dealt with exhaustively while some were being addressed.

He said: “We have only one or two areas that are new. One of the new areas is the renegotiation of the conditions of service, which is called the 2009 agreement. An agreement was reached in 2009 that their conditions of service would be reviewed every five years. It was done in 2014.

“We started one which the former UNILAG Pro Chancellor, Wale Babalakin (SAN) was chairing the committee. After Babalakin, Prof. Manzali was in charge and the committee came up with a draft document, proposed by the Federal Ministry of Education and ASUU.

“Today, Manzali’s committee has become defunct because many of the people in the committee are no longer pro chancellors. A new team has been constituted to have a second look at that document to make sure that some of the allowances are not against the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC) fixed rates for wages and allowances.

“If you propose allowances that do not comply with NSIWC rates, the government will not be accept it. So, it is important that they do the right thing from the beginning, so that whatever the committee presents can be approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).”

Regarding the issue of University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS), he said the meeting mandated a joint committee of ASUU, the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to conduct an integrity test on the platform in conjunction with neutral experts.

“We told them to conclude the test by March 8. If they conclude, we are expected to work on it within six weeks,” the minister said.

Ngige said there was no problem with the issue of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA), apart from the reconciliation of payments made in tranches to the university system.

The minister said: “Once we conclude the reconciliation, if the Federal Government is in arrears on any tranche, the Finance Minister will look for money to pay, even though the Federal Government does not have money.

“Earned allowance is an allowance for excessive workload. Last year it was paid based on the rule of the thumb theory of 10 percent of total personnel cost. This year, we have told the NUC to put up a committee and within the next three weeks, come up with a figure that will be sent to Finance Minister.

“For me I think we are on course, ASUU should go to their members, show them offers made to them by the government, so that they can call off the strike.”

The meeting was also attended by Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo (SAN), Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Peter Yerima Tarfa, Executive Secretary of NUC, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed and Chairman, National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC), Ekpo Nta, amongst others.