ASUU Strike: ASUU agrees to revert on Government’s Proposal

After an intensive closed-door meeting on Tuesday, which lasted for almost 8hrs both the Nigerian government team and the leadership of the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) emerged at about 11 p.m. with a possibility of reaching a resolution in their areas of conflict.

The president of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke, refused to comment on the conclusions that were made and promised to revert back to the government after consulting with his members.

Though the minister for Labor, Employment and productivity Chris Ngige, claimed both parties agreed on a lot of things and ASUU is expected to deliberate on governments proposal with its members so the strike can be called off as soon as possible.

The Agenda for the meeting was about Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) and Revitalization fund for Universities.

Furthermore, Hon. Ngige said although most of ASUU’s demands are being dealt with, the areas left will also be addressed soonest.

In his words “Like I told you earlier, a lot of the items have been dealt with extensively and some of them are work in progress.”

“One of the areas remaining is the renegotiation of the 2009 FGN-ASUU agreement, stating that the ministry of education has set up a committee to look into the submitted report of Munzali Jibril-led renegotiation committee.

Prof. Munzali, who took over the negotiation following the resignation of the former Chairman of the governing Council of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka, Wale Babalakin, as the head of the government team said it is important that allowances requested by ASUU are in pair with the structure available at the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission(NSIWC).

And in six weeks time the committee at the ministry of education “will round off everything and send all to Federal government”.

According to Ngige: “A new committee has been set up to take a second look at that document, and make sure, with ASUU’s contribution, some of the allowances are not against the NSIWC’s fixed salaries and allowances.

It is also important that the committee works well. So that whatever they present can be approved by the Federal Executive Council.” And within six weeks, the committee set up at the education ministry is expected to wrap up everything and revert to the Council.

On UTAS

The minister also spoke about the timeline given to the joint committee of ASUU members, officials of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and independent IT experts, that they have been given up till March 8 to come up with the report of a joint review of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS).

In his words: “They will also go there with the technical team and do a joint test on integrity and vulnerability test of UTAS and we were hopeful that when they commence the test, they will do it and give us a joint report.”

“We will also get neutral IT expert to join them. So that if they have areas of disagreement, it can be resolved. The timeline is for them to conclude by March 8 latest. We expect that we shall also work on it for six weeks only.”

Hon. Ngige emphasized that there was no problem with the EAA, saying “if there are those that are unpaid the minister of finance will look for money to pay them”.

He concluded that his ministry has reached out to the National Universities Commission (NUC) to set up a committee to come up with the computation of allowances for universities and forward it to the finance minister in the next three weeks.