Victor EzejaPresident of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, has said the union is still negotiating with the Federal Government on the 2009 agreement for possible resolution of the ongoing industrial dispute.
Prof. Osodeke was speaking in reaction to the comment by the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr Chris Ngige on Wednesday that the ongoing strike by ASUU would soon be called off.
Ngige had said there was no plan to establish an alternative payment platform for all labour unions in tertiary institutions.
The labour minister also reportedly said the ASUU has been invited for a meeting on Thursday, 23 June.
Reacting to that, the ASUU president, while appearing on Channels Television Sunrise Daily programme on Friday morning, said the union neither received any invitation nor attended any meeting convened or presided over by the labour minister on 23 June.
Osodeke disclosed that after series of agitations and meetings that ended in stalemate, ASUU was directed to meet with Minister of Education who set up a committee headed by Prof. Nimi Briggs approved by the Federal Government.
According to Osodoke, the committee has been with ASUU on a renegotiation of the 2009 agreement and concluded two weeks ago. He said the committee promised to take the resolutions made back to the government for consideration and then have final ratification with ASUU.
“We have been relating with the Minister of Education and we have been making some progress in that direction and so we are surprised that from nowhere the honourable minister of labour again came back telling the world what is not correct.
“We have been meeting the committee set up, headed by Emeritus Prof. Nimi Briggs and we have been discussing fluently and have concluded. We are waiting for the government to now ti us with that document and sign, that’ where we are,” Osodoke stated.
“If the government agree to what we negotiated with it, we will call off the strike.” He added.
The ASUU president blamed the labour minister for creating the problem leading to the lingering strike, stating that he believed in resorting to punitive measure by stopping the salaries of the academic staff of universities rather than resolving the problem leading to the agitation by the union.
Osodeke said the labour minister should allow the union to continue in the direction it is going with the federal government.
On what was agreed with the committee, the ASUU president said it would remain confidential until the agreement is ratified and made public.
It would be recalled that ASUU on February 14, 2022, embarked on a strike (more than four months now) which grounded academic activities in public universities over unresolved issues related to the 2009 agreement it had with the Federal Government. Part of the agitation of ASUU is bordering on the principle of autonomy in relation to having its own generated payment platform, the Universities Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS). The Federal Government on the other hand is insisting on the union members adopting the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) it created that is currently being used by personnel in various ministries and parastatals. ASSU claimed that the government-backed IPPIS was shortchanging its members.
The Federal Government in last this year had, however, claimed that the proposed UTAS failed integrity tests and was therefore unfit for use on a wide-scale. Nigige said then that the UTAS platform performed poorly when tested for stress tolerance and immunity to cyberattacks.
Reacting to this also, Prof. Osodeke said the last time UTAS was tested by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), it scored 99.3 per cent but NITDA claimed it has failed. According to the ASUU president, NITDA as a government agency was only playing politics to discredit the platform.
The Federal Government has proposed to conduct another test on the UTAS platform next week. Osodeke said the government should not play politics with the test again this time but should examine the programme properly.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
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