1st August, 2022
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has extended its ongoing strike by another four weeks.
The universities lecturers had been on strike since February, 2022 ASUU over issues of poor welfare condition, failure to renegotiate earlier agreements signed and the alleged imposition of IPPIS by the government.
its National President, Emmanuel Osodeke, in a statement on Monday the decision to extend the strike was reached at its National Executive Council (NEC) meeting.
According to Osodeke, following extensive deliberations and taking cognisance of government’s past failures to abide by its own timelines in addressing issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MOA), NEC resolved that the strike be rolled over for four weeks.
He said the move was to give government more time to satisfactorily resolve all the outstanding issues, saying that the role-over strike was with effect from 12.01a.m. on Monday, 1st August, 2022.
Osodeke stated that NEC recalled that government’s failure to conclude the process of renegotiating the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, deploy the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), pay outstanding arrears of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA), release agreed sum of money for the revitalisation of public universities (Federal and States), address proliferation and governance issues in State Universities, settle promotion arrears, release withheld salaries of academics, and pay outstanding third-party deductions, led to the initial declaration of the roll-over strike on 14th February, 2022.
He added that NEC viewed with seriousness the recent directive given by President Muhammadu Buhari to all Federal Universities that the Minister of Education, in consultation with other government officials, should resolve the lingering crisis and report to him within two weeks.
He said the union wondered why it had taken five full months and needless muscle-flexing for the government to come to the realisation of the need for honest engagement.