Strike continues, ASUU tells Ngige, insists on signing of renegotiated agreement, UTAS

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), on Tuesday, dashed the hope of parents and students for the early reopening of public universities by insisting that the ongoing strike will not be called off until the Federal Government sign the renegotiated agreement and accept the implementation of Universities Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as a payment platform.

ASUU also tackled the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, accusing him of being responsible for the prolonged strike action by the Union.

ASUU President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, who briefed newsmen in Abuja, said the Union needed to make clarifications on some of the allegations made by the Minister of Labour and Employment.

He insisted that the strike would not be suspended until the Federal Government sign the renegotiated agreement, accept UTAS as the payment platform in place of the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS), released a revitalisation fund among other issues on demand.

He added that ASUU is ready to end the strike any day Government fulfils its part of the bargain. He also wants Ngige dropped from the Federal Government negotiation team.

Recall that ASUU had embarked on a four-week warning strike on February 14. On March 14, the union extended the industrial action by another two months to allow the government to meet all of its demands.

On May 9, ASUU extended its rollover strike by another three months over the failure of the Federal Government to implement agreements reached with the Union.

The Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment had invoked the No Work, No Pay policy by stopping the salaries of the lecturers, with ASUU saying the Government resorted to the use of starvation as a weapon for breaking the collective resolve of ASUU members and undermine the patriotic struggle to reposition public universities in Nigeria was ill-advised and might prove counterproductive.

Osodeke while addressing journalists on Tuesday said it was imperative become imperative to update Nigerians and lovers of education everywhere in the world on the status of the ongoing nationwide strike action which began on 14 February 2022.

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He tasked the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, to ensure that the contending issues are resolved expeditiously within two weeks as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari.

President Buhari after receiving briefing on Tuesday from government officials involved in the negotiation with ASUU, directed the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu to resolve the prolonged strike and report back to him in two weeks’ time.

Urging Nigerians to hold Ngige responsible for the prolonged strike, Osodeke said, “ASUU, therefore, makes bold to say that the Minister of Labour and Employment has taken upon himself the role of unabashed protagonist in our ongoing dispute with the government of Nigeria for some inexplicable reasons.

He specifically dismissed claims there by Chris Ngige, that there was no agreement between ASUU and the government; that ASUU sat down to fix its own members’ salaries; and that the Union asked representatives of ministries departments and agencies (MDAs) to recuse themselves from the negotiations with the Federal Government Committee led by Emeritus Professor Nimi Briggs.

“Also, it appears that Dr Ngige has deliberately misrepresented the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) convention on the collective bargaining agreement and the roles of a conciliator to serve his propagandist interest in this matter,” he said

ASUU President said: “Following the resumption of the strike action by our Union at the University of Lagos, on February 14, 2022, we participated at several meetings at the instance of the Ministry of Labour and Employment chaired by Dr Chris Ngige as “Conciliator.”

“To our utter dismay, nothing concrete came out of the endless deliberations as the Conciliator kept approbating and reprobating. For instance, he would declare that he fully supported our demand that the renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU be speedily concluded within six weeks while at the same time creating an unrealistic pathway to arriving at a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) Similarly. Dr Ngige kept going back and forth on concluding the integrity test for the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) for replacing the discredited Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information (IPPIS) contrary to the letters and spirit of the Memorandum of Action (MoA) of December 2021.

“Matters got to a head when our Union leaders were forced to express their frustration at one of the so-called conciliatory meetings.

“When we expressed our frustration at the manners the engagement processes were going. Dr. went on to lampoon the Ministry of Education; saying he was not our employer. At a point, he directed our Union to go and picket the office of the Minister of Education, who is our employer! Subsequently, he tactfully recused himself,” he said.

He said the lecturers would fully participate in the two days of nationwide protest declared by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) following the continued closure of the public universities in Nigeria.

The nationwide protest, according to the NLC is scheduled to hold on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.

On the finding of universities, ASUU President condemned the proliferation of universities by both Federal and States that could not be properly funded, saying that “it becomes the pastime of government officials to talk tough about billions and trillions of naira whenever the issues of education and health sectors’ funding come up for mention.

“However, it is common knowledge that various sums of money in the same region which could have been deployed for human capacity development and public good usually develop into the thin air at the end of the day!

“We are therefore not surprised the leadership of the Ministry of Labour and Employment could condescend to the point of denigrating the import of massive injection of funds into the University Education sub-sector as they tried to miserably dismiss the vexed issue of funding Nigerian public universities and uplifting the country’s intellectual capital.

“While government and its agents, would like to look at the issue in the “here and now and funding as a one-off matter, we prefer to look at it longitudinally,” he said.