ASUU Strike: What ia told president Buhari – Ngige
Nigeria’s minister of labour and employment, Chris Ngige, has again expressed hope that the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will soon be called off. The minister, who spoke at the resumption of the conciliation meeting between the government and representatives of the lecturers’ union on Tuesday afternoon, said the meeting would end with “action” as demanded by the union.
ASUU had embarked on a four-week warning strike to press home its demands including the renegotiation of the ASUU/FG 2009 agreement, sustainability of the university autonomy by deploying the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) to replace the government’s “imposed” Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), the release of the reports of visitation panels to federal universities and distortions in salary payment challenges.
Others include funding for revitalisation of public universities, earned academic allowance, poor funding of state universities and promotion arrears.
While the Minister of Education Adamu Adamu had days after the commencement of the strike constituted the white paper panel of the visitation panels, it is yet to inaugurate them.
After the last meeting between ASUU and the government delegation, Mr Ngige described the strike as illegal, saying the union did not give a 14 days notice required by law before it embarked on the strike.
In its defence, ASUU said it did not embark on a fresh strike, and that the current strike was a roll-over of its suspended strike in December, 2020.
Ngige added that…
