Education

BREAKING: ASUU President Turns Down N50m Intervention To End Strike

Published

3 years ago

Jun 11, 2022.

A.A.S Opeyemi

There was a mild drama when the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) rejected Berekete Family radio’s intervention to end the ongoing strike.
…in an interview last month, Osedeke told NAN that none of these demands had been met by the Federal Government

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EKO HOT BLOG reports the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) rejected Berekete Family radio’s intervention to end the ongoing strike, causing some minor drama.

Since February, ASUU has been on strike, and all attempts to get lecturers back in the classroom have failed.

On Saturday morning, the host of the radio show, Ahmad Isah, also known as Ordinary President, invited ASUU president Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke and his team to explain to Nigerians why the union is still on strike.
Isah also stated that he had established a special intervention bank account with TAJ Bank to raise funds for the union in order to end the strike.

Isah publicly displayed the N50 million cash donation from Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State, ostensibly to persuade ASUU to support the intervention.

The ASUU President frowned at the development as soon as the money was displayed, saying they should not be associated with it.

Isah threatened to end the intervention at that point, and many Nigerians who called in during the show described ASUU as “insensitive.”

The striking lecturers’ demands include, funding of the revitalisation of public universities, Earned Academic Allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) and promotion arrears.

Others are the renegotiation of 2009 ASUU-FG Agreement and the inconsistency in Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System.

In an interview last month, Osedeke told NAN that none of these demands had been met by the Federal Government.

“All the issues that made us to go on strike are still there; that is the revitalisation fund, that is putting more money into universities and revitalising the infrastructure in the universities. There is also the issue of our mode of payments in the universities. There is no university in the world where lecturers are paid salaries from the Accountant General’s Office.

“We have challenged them to provide one, if universities are a universal body, why are they doing things differently. We talk of negotiation of the agreement, the proliferation of universities, among others, so there are lots of issues that they have not resolved,” he said.

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The ASUU president also said that the government had also refused to accept UTAS that he said had been tested and passed with a scored 99.3 per cent.

Osedeke urged the Federal Government to do the needful in order for students to return to school.

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