ASUU Shelves Proposed Strike for More Consultations

*Berates govt over poor lecturers’ remuneration

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja and James Sowole in Abeokuta
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has resolved to shelve its plan to embark on an industrial action to compel federal government to meet its demands.

Instead the union said it has decided to go for more consultations and to give government opportunity to address all outstanding issues arising from the December 2020 Memoradum of Action (MoA).

ASUU had threatened to take measures, which included downing tools, to get government to address its demands.
However, in a statement issued by the ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, yesterday, the union said it took account of efforts by many patriotic Nigerians both within and outside the country to ensure amicable resolution of the dispute.

But Osodake said ASUU would 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.”

The statement which summed up decisions reached at the emergency National Executive Council (NEC) of ASUU held at its National Secretariat at the University of Abuja, at the weekend, said the union would review the situation at another date..

The meeting was meant to review the level of government’s implementation of the FGN-ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) of 23rd December, 2020, and other related matters with a view to deciding on way forward.

In deciding to stay action on strike, Osodake said: “NEC took full account of efforts by student union bodies, leading media traditional rulers, civil society organisations and other interest groups within and outside Nigeria to make government address all outstanding issues arising from the December 2020 MoA.”

In particular, ASUU president said the union took special cognisance of the pledges made by the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) to make further consultations on the crisis in the coming days with a view to finding an amicable resolution.
He accused the government of reneging on its promise to set up an inter-ministerial committee to handle renegotiation of the 2009 agreement.

On the issue of the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) ASUU said it was fully prepared to address all the report of the “integrity test” on UTAS raised by the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to pave way for its deployment.

The statement read in part: “NEC was worried by the spirited efforts of government agents to reduce the demands of ASUU to a regime of intermittent payment of watered-down revitalisation fund and release of distorted and grossly devalued Earned Academic Allowances (EAA).

“NEC condemns, in strong terms, the surreptitious moves to pooh-pooh our demands on the review of the NUC’s Act to curb the proliferation of universities by state governments who are not funding the existing ones; adoption of the University Transparency Accountability Solutions (UTAS) with concurrent discontinuance of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel accumulated promotion arrears.

“NEC concluded that government has failed to satisfactorily address all the issues raised in the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement and subsequent MoUs and MoAs.

“However, considering the ongoing intervention and consultation efforts, NEC resolved to review the situation at a later date with a view to deciding on the next line of action”

In a related development, ASUU at the weekend, decried the alleged poor remuneration of lecturers in public universities, stating that the situation had turned lecturers to farmers and taxi drivers.
The union also accused the federal government of a deliberate attempt to impoverish university lecturers by its blunt refusal to implement the MoA signed with ASUU in 2020.

The Zonal Coordinator ASUU, Lagos Zone, Adelaja Odukoya expressed the position of the ASUU members in the zone at a news conference at the end of a meeting held in Abeokuta.

The Lagos Zone of the union comprises of members in public universities in Ogun and Lagos state.
Addressing journalists at the end of its meeting held at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Abeokuta, Ogun state, Odukoya stated that the government had not reviewed salaries of varsity lecturers since 2009.
The conference was entitled, “Our Pay Cannot Take Us Home: End Poverty Wage Now.”

Odukoya lamented that Nigerian lecturers were the least paid in the world, describing their salary as a, “disgraced which shows the premium which the Nigerian government placed on education in the country.”
He noted that the last time the salary of lecturers was increased was in 2009, accusing the federal government of “weaponising” poverty against lecturers.

Odukoya declared that the union was not going back on its planned industrial action following government’s failure to meet its demands.

The strike, he said had become imperative, “given the government’s determination to surrender the Nigerian University System to the rapacious plundering onslaught and permutations of both short-sighted Nigerian officials and foreign agents of neoliberalism.”

Odukoya also accused the federal government of paying lip service to education by poorly funding the sector, poor pay to lecturers, and inadequate infrastructure in tertiary institutions, among others.
He berated members of the National Assembly for enjoying, “jumbo” pay at the detriment of lecturers’ welfare, saying, “We have always insisted that the cost of governance in this country is too high and nobody is doing anything about it and to increase the salary of lecturers is now a problem for the government.”