ASUU strike: Finding early resolution

Like a thief in the night, the news of an indefinite, total, and comprehensive strike declared by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) broke into various homes on Sunday November 4 2018. The National Executive Council of the union which held at the Federal University of Technology, Akure had unanimously expressed collective disappointment that no substantial progress has been made on the issues of the implementation of 2009 FGN/ASUU agreements, Memorandum of Understanding (MOU; 2012 and 2013) and Memorandum of Action (MOA, 2017) and the truncation of the renegotiation of the union’s agreements. The goal of the strike is to compel government to address the funding for revitalisation of public universities based on the FGN-ASUU MOU of 2012, 2013 and the MOA of 2017. The union wants the reconstitution of the current government team to allow for a leader and chairman who has the interest of the nation and its people at heart; release of the forensic audit report on Earned Academic Allowances (EAA), payments of all outstanding earned academic allowances and mainstreaming of same into salaries beginning with the 2018 budget; payment of all arrears of shortfall in salaries to all universities that have met the verification requirements of the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA); and release of University Pension Fund operational license.

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The Federal Government released the sum of N23billion naira to pay outstanding Earned Academic Allowances of outstanding of 2009 and 2010. From 2011 to date, Nigerian academics have been teaching and supervising excess number of students for free while those governors receive pension and severance allowances without being delayed! It is on record that many lecturers have died this year on stress-related deaths.

The 2013 MOU stipulated that Nigerian public varsities would need the sum of N1.3 trilion for a modest revitalisation. The fund was to be paid in tranches of (N200 (2013), 220b (2014), 220billion (2015), 220billion (2016), N220b (2017) and 220billion (2018)) in five years. Only the Goodluck Jonathan government released 200 billion in 2013. Since that single intervention nothing has come forth. The result is decay in infrastructure, inability to attract foreign scholars and poor products.

The union was also angered by the hard-line stance of the leader of Government renegotiation of ASUU/FGN agreements, Dr Wale Babalakin (SAN) who the union reportedly said only new agreements should be discussed while previous agreements and MOU/MOA (1992, 2001, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017) should be discarded! This led to the breakdown of renegotiation. ASUU felt insulted and pained that it lost many brilliant Nigerians like Professor Festus Iyayi to the struggle. In 2018, 1,653, 127 candidates wrote Joint Admission and Matriculation Examinations (JAMB). About ninety-four percent of this figure picked public varsities. Only 6 percent chose private universities owned by the ruling class. It is unfortunate that for the next few weeks or months, people’s livelihoods will be stunted, students can’t complete their semester examinations, business interests will suffer, families will witness crisis and lecturers will suffer not seeing their students, endure abuses from the learned and illiterate publics.

Tade Ipadeola, [email protected]