Strike: ASUU Yet to Conclude Consultations

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Nwolu Obiajulu

Obiajulu Nwolu is an established writer at africannewstoday.com. He is passionate about African affairs. He loves writing about interesting facts relating to the African continent and enjoys sharing his knowledge with others.

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The leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has sought time to conclude consultations with its chapters on Wednesday.

The union was expected to communicate its stance on the lingering strike to the federal government last Friday but reports say ASUU asked for an extension of time to Wednesday as it could not collate decisions by all branches last week.

ASUU had requested that its meeting with the federal government initially schedule for last Friday be postponed to Wednesday to enable it to collate and analyse decisions of nationwide branches, a source told This Day.

The source said, “ASUU requested for the extension of time for it to hold wider consultations with members and to be able to receive positions of the various branches. They said they should be given till Wednesday to conclude their parley with members,” the source said.

The federal government had in November agreed to pay the lecturers not registered with the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) salary arrears from April to June using the old payment method as a measure of goodwill, pending the approval of the ASUU-initiated platform, the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS).

Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, said the government had earlier brought an aggregate offer of N50 billion to ASUU, N20 billion for revitalisation and N30 billion for earned allowances.

The minister said that the government reviewed the proposal to N25 billion from N20 billion for revitalisation fund and increased the earned allowances to N40 billion immediate payment, bringing the total sum to N65 billion as a show of commitment to university funding.

ASUU, however rejected the offer, demanding for N110 billion which is 50 percent of a tranche of N220 billion it had earlier demanded but the federal government rejected, citing plunge of government revenue.

The federal government made an improved offer of N40 billion for revitalisation while the earned allowances for unions remain N30 billion.
The federal government also gave assurances that it would address the pending issues of constituting visitation panels for federal universities and raising a new renegotiation team to begin talks with ASUU on the 2009 agreement.

It was based on the new proposal by the federal government that ASUU agreed to go back to brief its organs and to get back to the government last Friday on its willingness or otherwise to call off the strike.