THE leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students has urged the Federal Government to do everything possible to accede to the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), to avert another round of strike by the union.
The students warned that should the lecturers be allowed to proceed with the planned strike, the country would witness a mother of all protests which would be worse than the #EndSars protest.
Vice president, Special Duties, NANS, Comrade Odiahi Thomas Ikhine, told Nigerian Tribune that the students would no longer fold their arms and watch their future being destroyed by unnecessary disruption of the academic calendar.
National president of ASUU, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, had threatened that lecturers would resume the suspended strike following the failure of the Federal Government to implement the agreement reached with the union, especially the Memorandum of Action (MoA) agreed upon that led to the suspension of last nine-month strike by ASUU.
Osodeke disclosed that the meeting of the principal officers of the union was held in Abuja and resolved to proceed on consultation with branches, adding that the consultation would be done with within the next one day after which the union would come out with its position.
Comrade Ikhine, while reacting to the development, said the students were waiting patiently for the outcome of the consultations of ASUU and the last-ditch effort of the Federal Government to avert the strike.
He said: “We understand that governments at all levels, both federal and state, do not have the interest of the education sector at heart and it is unfortunate that it is the children of the poor that attend public universities.
“For ASUU, we appreciate their moves because if not for them, the Federal Government would have long abandoned the education sector as we know that even the annual budgetary allocation to education falls below expectation and it is a source of worry to us.
“We are not happy that ASUU is threatening to go on strike, because at the end of the day, we will be the ones at the receiving end.
“If the Federal Government does not do the needful and ASUU should go on strike, we have also put in place the measure we are going to adopt to confront the government.
“We are going to confront the government because our silence thus far should not be taken for granted. It will be in their own interest to do everything humanly possible to ensure that the strike does not happen; because if it happens, I believe the government will witness something that is worse than the EndSars protest. We will not relent for a month or weeks or as long as the strike would last.
“We have the numbers and I thank God that they know. We are waiting.”
The Federal Government has however said it had paid lecturers N30 billion Revitalisation Fund and N22.5 billion Earned Academic Allowance, stressing that it had made a lot of progress in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding reached with ASUU.
Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, who gave an update of the government’s engagement with ASUU, said that he had received a confirmation from the Federal Ministry of Finance that funds had been released to the universities for the revitalisation of infrastructure and payment of earned allowances.
“By Friday (last week) the Accountant General’s Office and the Funds Office of the Federal Ministry of Finance told me that they had paid the Earned Allowances to the 38 federal universities and by today (Saturday) all the affected universities would have gotten their monies to pay the workers.
“I have forwarded the position to the ASUU leadership,” he said.
Ngige also said that the contentious issue of the salary payment platform, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) was being addressed, revealing that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) had submitted its report to the government.
He said: “Just today again, NITDA submitted its report on the assessment conducted on UTAS and it has been forwarded it to the Ministry of Finance, Accountant General’s Office and IPPIS Office so that they will look at it and sort out other details. Copies of the report have also been forwarded to the Federal Ministry of Education and National Universities Commission (NUC).
Reacting to the congresses being planned by ASUU to mobilise its various branches, Ngige said that the leadership of the union would be expected to inform its organs of the latest progress made both in release of payment for Earned Allowances and Revitalisation Fund.
“They will tell them what happened. The important thing is that we have kept our promise that the N30 billion revitalisation funds have been paid and that N22.5 billion Earned Allowances have also been paid.
“So, we look forward to tackling other remaining areas like errors in computation of salaries of some of the staff and of course the question of renegotiation of agreements, which is being handled with the Federal Ministry of Education,” he said.
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