Published 25th Jul, 2021

By Damilola Ayeni

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in Nigeria might embark on another industrial action over Federal Government’s failure to honour agreements reached before the suspension of the last strike .

Ibrahim Inuwa, Chairman of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University chapter of the union, who dropped the hint while speaking with Daily Trust, said government had only addressed two out of the eight concerns of the union.

“This is coming as result of the failure of the Federal Government of Nigeria to implement many aspects of memorandum of Action (MoA) it willingly signed with ASUU that ended the last strike in December, 2020,” he said.

“Only two out of the eight items, including salary shortfall and visitation panel to federal universities have been addressed.”

According to Inuwa, other items, including earned academic allowance, funding for revitalization of public universities, proliferation of state universities, renegotiation and replacement of integrated payroll, personnel information system, university transparency and accountability solution had all been left out of government’s action

He also accused the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation of denying some union members their salaries while reducing those of others.

“We are convinced this is done in connivance with the university administration through the distortion of our members’ personal details. Additionally, the OAGF is not fully remitting check off dues deducted from our salaries,” he said.

“The ultimate goal of the OAGF appears to be doing everything humanly possible to coerce members of ASUU to enroll into IPPIS and to kill the union finally.

“This plague has been evident across all Federal Universities in Nigeria since February, 2020. This, to us, is an outright act of ingratitude on the part of the government for the sacrifices members of ASUU are making in order to establish a progressive nation – a clear case of punishing citizens for being patriotic.”

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