Nigerians Need to Intervene in ASUU-FG Confrontation- Comr. Raphael
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has called on well meaning Nigerians to urgently intervene in the long face-off between them and the Federal Government in relation to the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, and Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, IPPIS.
According to ASUU there is an urgent need to salvage the country’s educational sector from collapse in order to save the future of the youths.
Speaking to the press on Thursday, at Federal University Lokoja, Comr. Raphael Amokaha, the Zonal Coordinator, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Nsukka Zone (ASUU-NSUKKA ZONE), said that the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement was the main reason for the impasse and industrial action all this while.
He also pointed out that ASUU has obviously exercised unparalleled patience and explored all avenues for a strike free solution to the federal government-induced crisis in the public universities without finding a headway.
According to Comr. Raphael, this is against the backdrop of the legendary reputation of successive Nigerian governments who honored agreements with ASUU in the past.
In his words, “How else can it be explained that we have a set of leaders that pay lip service to their commitment to national development? In spite of this ASUU has consistently demonstrated that it is a patriotic union.”
“Having gone out of our way to spend from the miserable salaries of the members of the Union to develop a more robust homegrown payment platform in UTAS at no cost to the government, with the hope that it would restore faith and confidence in the educational system once again and also, to prove again that the challenge in the University system has nothing to do with the capacity of the lecturers but the government.
“It would seem, with benefit of hindsight, that the insistence of the government on imposing IPPIS which was used to continuously starve and subject their members to untold hardship, decapitating their salaries without restraint and absolute nonpayment for months despite the manifest inadequacies of the platform. was a ploy to distract them from their original goal which is to focus on making the university system work.
He further urged the government to deploy the use of UTAS, a more efficient platform, which has passed all the integrity tests subjected to it by government agencies and quit with the delay.
