The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), on Tuesday disclosed that the federal government is still owing about N880 billion on revitalization of universities and also refused to mainstream earned academic allowances in the 2022 budget as promised.
Ayo Akinwole, chairman, University of Ibadan chapter of ASUU , who disclosed this after congress said that the union will not take lightly and will resist the grand plan of the Muhammadu Buhari led federal government to refuse to sign the renegotiated agreements.
He hinted that rather than signing the agreement which took four years to be reached, “the federal government now said the agreement will now be tabled before another tripartite committee to consider it. “We know this is a strategy of the Buhari administration to continue to impoverish the intellectual community.”
Akinwole, a professor who presided over the congress stated that the federal government has however employed all formal and informal tactics to delay the renegotiation of 2009 agreements for four years and the new agreements was supposed to have been effective if the government had signed it in 2021.
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Flanked by Chris Omoregie, the secretary; Sarah Akintola, treasurer and Dapo Okareh, internal auditor; Akinwole also said that the Union has explored all possible avenues to make government do the needful and allowed many stakeholders who approached the union to mediate to prevent another strike but “they all reported back to us that they were not able to convince government and that government was adamant”
The ASUU boss also lamented that while Nigerian politicians are among the highest paid in the world, Nigerian lecturers are among the poorly paid in the world with professors earning less than $1,000 dollars in a month.
On University Transparency, Accountability Solution, UTAS Akinwole said “the NITDA examination rated the UTAS over 87percent and asked us to adjust the areas noted and resubmit for re-evaluation and start a new long process and we asked them what process did the fraudulent IPPIS go through by the NITDA before it was forced down with the monumental fraud discovered in it?
“The IPPIS which is foreign imposed was bot subjected to NITDA evaluation but a homegrown solution that was developed will be perpetually delayed so that the welfare of our members will be sacrificed to ensure that IPPIS continue to enrich their paymasters. We would not allow this. It is our destiny and we will fight for our own welfare.”
He said the leadership of the Union is supporting the decision to fight for the welfare of her members which has been neglected for over 13 years saying that the Union has been pushed to the wall and will now fight back.
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