Strike: ASUU accuses FG review committee of procrastination, endless meetings

The Chairperson of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Calabar Zone, Happiness Uduk, has alleged that the Federal Government’s sub-committee set up to review the demands of the body is not interested in resolving the planned industrial action by the Union.

ASUU had given the Federal Government a 14-day ultimatum to resolve several lingering issues, failing which it would proceed with another strike.

The lecturers are demanding, among other things, the conclusion of the renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement based on the Draft Agreement by the Nimi Briggs Committee in 2021, which is already outdated given the current Dollar/Naira ratio, and the release of withheld salaries for three and a half months as a result of the 2022 industrial action.

They are similarly demanding the release of unpaid salaries for staff on sabbatical, part-time, and adjunct positions, which were affected by the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, otherwise known as IPPIS; as well as the release of outstanding third-party deductions, such as check-off dues and co-operative contributions by members, which were captured in the 2023 Federal Budget, among several others.

However, the Federal Government, in a desperate attempt to prevent the planned strike, set up a sub-committee to review the demands of the university lecturers.

But speaking on Monday while addressing journalists in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, ahead of the planned strike, Uduk accused the committee of only being interested in holding meetings to draw allowances for themselves.

She said, “There have been meetings upon meetings without anything coming forth; all they have been doing is just calling those meetings so that they can get allowances, that is all.

“They have met more than five times, and each time they will say, ‘Oh, we can’t find this document,’ and when we provide the document, they will say, ‘Oh, there is no cash backing,’ even when budgets were made for some of those things. You still tell us there is no more money.

“So I think it is still the same tactics; it is their tactic of delaying us. I want to inform you that nothing tangible has changed, save for meetings and more meetings for which government agents were more concerned with receiving allowances for convening such meetings from taxpayers’ money.”

She lamented that the failure of the government to implement the contents of several Memoranda of Understanding and Action between 2013 and 2022 has particularly hampered access to industrial harmony in public universities, especially as renegotiation has lingered for over seven years, spanning the Babalakin-led team through Jubrin Munzali’s team and Emeritus Prof. Nimi Briggs’ Committee.

She expressed regret that since the inception of the APC-led administration, all efforts to get them to adopt and implement the said Agreement have been frustrated, adding that with the current economic realities, even the wage award and palliative cannot replace the renegotiated agreement, which was reached following the time-honoured principle of Collective Bargaining.

While lamenting that the government has refused to address the exit of universities from the obnoxious IPPIS in spite of a presidential directive and a court order since December 2023, the ASUU chairperson vowed that the union would not fold its arms and allow the government to play games with the welfare of its already battered members in both federal and state-owned universities.

“Our union will withdraw services, and we should not be held responsible for the breakdown in industrial harmony, which will arise as a result of the government’s insensitivity, insincerity, indifference, and time-buying tactics.

“The union calls on those in authority, as well as their agents, to seize this window to forestall the looming crisis,” she said.