Updated: ASUU 'Conditionally' Suspends Strike

Author: One Class

The Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) on Wednesday called off its strike, ending a protracted industrial action that started since March 2020.

The union said it has suspended the nine-month-old strike while it monitors the compliance level of the federal government on the concessions the latter has made.

Speaking at a briefing at the union’s secretariat in Abuja on Wednesday, the union’s president, Biodun Ogunyemi, said this decision was reached after its national executive council met on Tuesday.

Mr Ogunyemi further added that the issue of IPPIS has also been resolved.

On when studies would resume fully in the nation’s public universities in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the country, Mr Ogunyemi said the teachers were ready to resume as long full health measures are put in place.

“As far as we are concerned, we are ready to resume work. Let the government do what is needed to ensure safety. We insist that the COVID-19 protocol should be observed.”

The briefing is still on. We will provide more details in our subsequent reporting.

“As far as we are concerned, we are ready to resume work. Let the government do what is needed to ensure safety. We insist that the COVID-19 protocols should be observed, and the requirements for observing the protocols should be met.”

He noted that the suspension is to “give the government the benefit of the doubt ” subject to how “truthful” the federal government is to its promises.

“What we have done is to give the government the benefit of doubt and that is why we have added the caveat. Should the government renege, our members are not tired of withdrawing their services,” he noted.

The suspended strike began in March over the non-payment of salaries of ASUU members who failed to enrol into the federal government’s IPPIS, a payroll software mandated for all public officials and some unmet agreements between ASUU and successive administrations.

Concessions

Although Mr Ogunyemi did not give the specific concessions that have been made by the government, he told reporters that some backlogs of allowances have been paid.

He said that the union expects both the states and federal governments to release the Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) and “to faithfully implement all the agreements reached and signed with ASUU.”

The federal government has, meanwhile, released N65 billion to the universities to address some of the lecturers’ demands.

The release, Labour Minister Chris Ngige said “was proposed to be shared in two different manners. First, a proposal for N25 billion revitalisation and N40 billion earned allowances for all the unions in the universities.

The second proposal, he added, was “the issue of revitalisation getting N30 billion and earned allowances getting N35 billion.”

The government had also agreed to pay the lecturers their outstanding salaries using an older payment platform, GIFMIS, different from the controversial IPPIS. On Wednesday, however, Mr Ogunyemi said the deployment of UTAS was underway.

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