ASUU commences 30days warning strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) national executives’ council (NEC to NEC) meeting held on Monday, February 14 has approved a 30-day warning strike that commences today with immediate effect.

ASUU stated that the immediate reason for the strike is the federal government’s failure to meet with the agreement on upscaling the salaries of the lecturers and other related issues.

According to a source, ASUU decided to hold a closed-door meeting of its highest body in the University of Lagos (UNILAG) to ratify the decision on a warning strike. ASUU would make public decisions reached later today after the apex body’s deliberation.

At the end of the open national executives’ council meeting which gives room for other members of the union to attend, the body resolved a four weeks warning strike to give the federal government the opportunity to meet with the agreement it reached with ASUU.

Adepoju Tejumaiye, a senior lecturer in the University of Lagos told BusinessDay that though ASUU had taken a decision the union would make it known later.

Ifeanyi Abada, the ASUU chairman of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, also confirmed that the union reached some decision but was yet public when called. He urged students and parents to be patient as ASUU would disclose its position in the course of the day.

Read also: FG ready to pacify ASUU over strike

ASUU has been locked into an intense battle with the federal government on the revitalisation of public universities, earned academic allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) promotion arrears, implementation of the renegotiated 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement and discrepancies in the implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system (IPPIS).

In November 2019, the federal government agreed to commit about N50billion to the education sector, N20billion for revitalisation, and N30billion for earned allowances. This was reviewed to N25billion and N40billion respectively when ASUU rejected the offer, insisting on N110billion, which is 50 percent of a tranche of N220billion that it had demanded, but which the government declined, citing paucity of funds.

The disagreement over the government offer led to raising the revitalisation fund to N40billion, while earned allowances remained N30billion.

The federal government also gave assurances that it would address the pending issues of constituting visitation panels for federal universities, which it had since done, as well as raising a new renegotiation team to begin talks with ASUU on the 2009 agreement.