The academic staff union of universities have refused to call off it’s indefinite industrial action even after Federal Government claimed to have reached an agreement with them.
However, ASUU on Thursday, 10th January said the ongoing strike would not be called off until the Federal Government fully implemented all the offers it made to the union.
The public university lecturers said they were tired of Federal Government’s antics of making unfulfilled promises, insisting that the strike would be called off after they got tangible evidence and concrete actions that the offers made to them by the Federal Government had been implemented.
This was made known by the National President, ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, during an interview with Punch Nigeria.
He said the team of the union that met with the government on Tuesday did not reach any agreement with the Federal Government.
Asked when the strike would then be called off, Ogunyemi said,
“Our members said they want to see evidence of satisfactory implementation of all they have proposed before the strike can be called off.”
On Tuesday, ASUU met with the Federal Government officials including the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, as well as his Labour and Employment counterpart, Chris Ngige.
After their discussions, Ngige explained what the Federal Government was offering to the union.
He said the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Ministry of Finance had confirmed with evidence that N15.4bn had been released to public universities.
But ASUU president recalled that last year, the government promised to release funds for the revitalisation of public universities, which was one of the demands of the union, but failed to do so.
He explained that in order to forestall a situation ASUU and the government would restart negotiations on arrears of earned academic allowances, both sides agreed that “it would be mainstreamed into the 2019 budget.”
According to him, such an agreement was reached last year, but he said the government failed to honour it.