ASUU threatens fresh strike, gives FG Tuesday ultimatum

THE Academic Staff Union of Universities has expressed its readiness to embark on another round of industrial action following what it called the failure of the Federal Government to implement an agreement signed with the union.

The union is giving the government till month end (Tuesday) to reach out or it will activate the procedure of embarking on strike.

The union's President, Prof. Emmanuel

Osodeke, who disclosed this in an interview

with The PUNCH on Sunday, added that the FG no longer picked its calls.

Recall that in March 2020, ASUU embarked on a strike following its disagreement with the FG over the funding of the universities and the ineffectiveness and discrepancies around the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System and others.

ASUU, however, developed the University

Transparency and Accountability Solution to

replace IPPIS and had several meetings with

the Ministries of Finance, Education, Labour

and Employment, and the Office of the

Accountant General of the Federation before it was approved but yet to be implemented.

Likewise, the FG and ASUU signed an

agreement aimed at resolving some of the

demands of ASUU, a development that led to

the suspension of the strike on December 24,

2020.

In addition, after a meeting with the FG on

August 2, 2021, Osodeke said the Nigeria

Information Technology Development Agency insisted that UTAS must be re-presented to the end users.

Also, at the meeting, Minister of Labour and

Employment, Chris Ngige, assured ASUU that

the N22bn earned allowance captured in the

2021 supplementary budget would soon be

accessed by university workers.

On the contrary, Osodeke told one of our

correspondents on Sunday that the FG had

stopped reaching out to ASUU and had failed

to implement the agreement reached.