ASUU Strike Continues Until FG Comes To Its Senses – Union

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has urged education stakeholders to be patient with the union adding that it would not back down from its strike action until the federal governments commits to upgrading the state of universities.

“The strike will continue until the FG comes to its senses and demonstrate a credible commitment to funding of tertiary education to march at par with what is obtainable in other African countries,” ASUU stated on Facebook.

Recall that the union had embarked on strike on March 23, urging government to address the decadence in the universities.

ASUU Chairman, University of Lagos chapter, Dr Dele Ashiru, had also told THE WHISTLER that the union wanted the best for university education in the country.

“The demands of ASUU before federal government are clear and they are: they should inject money into the university system so that there will be more classrooms, laboratories and libraries for our students, they should renegotiate the 2009 agreement with our members which will increase the welfare of those who are teaching the students and motivate them to teach well and also to ask federal government to send visitation panels to our universities to check corruption and governance issues in the university system.

“Once Government meets these demands, ASUU is ever ready and willing to go back to classroom,” he said.

Among ASUU’s main demand is the approval for the use of its own payment platform known as the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), as against government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

But the Federal Ministry of Education had maintained that the union would not determine how its employer should pay them.

“There is nowhere in the world where an employee dictates to his employer, how he should be paid, except Nigeria’s ASUU,” the ministry’s spokesperson, Ben Bem Goong, had told our correspondent.

The union and the Federal Ministry of Labor and Employment have had series of meetings that ended in a deadlock.