ASUU ultimatum to FG ends, demands unfulfilled

The federal government has taken steps to prevent industrial action at public universities across the country as the University Academic Staff Union’s three-week deadline ended on Sunday.

State Education Minister Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, in an interview with reporters on Sunday, said the ministry wrote a letter to the finance ministry on payment of allowances to university staff.

But the union told one of our correspondents that the government had only satisfied one of its demands.
ASUU gave the federal government a three-week ultimatum on November 15 on the government’s inability to meet its demands.

State Education Minister Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, in an interview with PUNCH on Sunday, said the ministry had written a letter to the finance ministry on payment of allowances to university staff.

But the union told one of our correspondents that the government had only satisfied one of its demands.
ASUU gave the federal government a three-week ultimatum on November 15 on the government’s inability to meet its demands.

After the union’s National Executive Council meeting at Abuja University on November 13-14, the president of ASUU. Professor Emmanuel Osodeke lamented that despite a meeting with the Minister of Labor and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, on October 14, 2021, on issues such as funding for the revitalization of public universities, academic allowances earned, the university transparency solution, promotion arrears, the renegotiation of the 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement, and the inconsistencies in the payment of the integrated payroll and staff information system, none of the requests had been met .

Osodeke said the union would meet on Sunday to take a decision on the issue. As of the time of sending this report, the union was still meeting.

“The deadline will elapse by Sunday. They only met one out of our requests which is the NEEDS assessment; the revitalisation funds of N30bn but they paid only N20bn to the universities. The other requests have not been fulfilled even the ones they promised.

Our officers are meeting tomorrow, we will let you know our decision by tomorrow (Sunday),” he said on Saturday.

When contacted at 8:30pm on Sunday, ASUU president said the union was still meeting. “We haven’t taken a final decision yet. We have to consult all our branches and zones. The national cannot just sit down and call for action. The government didn’t implement what they promised us,” he said.

But Nwajiuba said the ministry of education had written its finance counterpart on the payment, adding that the Minister of Finance had acknowledged the receipt of the letter.

He said, “We have sent a letter to the ministry of finance and in the letter we did a breakdown of each university and the individuals to be paid. We do not pay unions. What we will do is to pay each university. We have done the breakdown.

“I spoke to the minister of finance yesterday and she said she got the letter and her ministry would work with the breakdown that we gave them. The payment will be paid as soon as due process is concluded by the ministry of finance. But it should be noted that the money will not be paid to the union as a whole but it would be paid to each university.”