16th November, 2021
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila has summoned the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof Emmanuel Osedeke, to an emergency meeting on Thursday, November 18, 2021.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed; Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu were also summoned.
They were all summoned after ASUU issued 3 weeks ultimatum over the failure of the government to implement the agreement reached with it.
The Federal Government had signed a memorandum of understanding with ASUU last year, which made it call off nine months strike.
The government promised to fulfill demands ranging from payment of earned allowances, the introduction of the UTAS platform for University workers, payment of revitalization fund for Universities among others.
The National Universities Commission also promised to pay the sum of N30bn as revitalisation fund for federal universities.
The ASUU president, however, told journalists on Monday that the Federal Government had yet to implement the agreements and was not giving cogent reasons for not doing so.
He said, “The N30bn revitalization fund for public universities purported to be kept in a dedicated account at the Central Bank of Nigeria has yet to be disbursed even when a majority of the vice-chancellors have successfully defended their proposals as a condition of accessing the fund.
“The government gave the assurance that the fund would be paid by the end of October. Surprisingly, this is November 15 and nothing has been heard from the government about it.
“At the meeting with the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, the ES said the N22.17bn earned allowances had been appropriated in the 2021 budget based on the weighted average of the annual salary appropriated for each university.
“It was then agreed that the Ministry of Education would take one week, while the Ministry of Finance would take till the end of October to effect payment, but surprisingly till now, nothing has been done to implement this.”
Osodeke also lamented the failure of the government to fast-track the implementation of the UTAS platform, which had subjected university lecturers to inconsistencies in the payment of salaries on the IPPIS platform.
He said: “We are giving the Federal Government a three-week ultimatum, if after three weeks they don’t meet our demands, we will be going on strike.
“We believe we have tried enough by giving them enough time.”