The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has once again extended its industrial action which is on its 195 days since February 14 when the union declared a 30-day warning strike.
According to a statement from ASUU after the union’s National Executive Council (NEC) meeting at its headquarters at the University of Abuja on Monday, August 29, the real strike may be about to start for the democratic right to be paid for work not done.
The decision to extend the strike was taken after a series of heated discussions over the federal government’s stand on ‘no work, no pay.’
Adamu Adamu, the minister of education had insisted that the federal government will not pay the lecturers for the six months or so they had been on strike.
According to the minister, “All contentious issues between the government and ASUU had been settled,” the minister claimed, “except the quest for members’ salaries for the period of the strike to be paid, a demand that President Buhari has flatly rejected.”
ASUU had on August 1 rolled over its lingering strike over the disagreement between the lecturers’ leaders and the federal government.
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Specifically, ASUU remembered the government’s failure to conclude the process of renegotiating the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, deploy the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), pay outstanding arrears of Earned Academic Allowances, EAA, release the agreed-to sum of money for the revitalisation of public universities (federal and states), address proliferation and governance issues in State Universities, settle promotion arrears, release withheld salaries of academics, and pay outstanding third-party deductions led to the initial declaration of the roll-over strike on February 14, 2022.
On March 14 ASUU extended the strike by two months to afford the federal government more time to address all of its demands.
The union also accused the federal government of displaying an indifferent attitude toward its demands.
