ASUU-NEC said it “was disappointed that Government did not treat the matters involved with utmost urgency they deserved during the four-week period as expected of a reasonable, responsive, and well-meaning administration.”

By Qosim Suleiman

Premium Times

The Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU) said it extended its ongoing industrial action by another two months to afford the government more time to address all of its demands.

ASUU also accused the government of displaying an indifferent attitude toward its demands.

The National Executive Council(NEC) of ASUU held an emergency meeting on Sunday, March 13, 2022 at its National Secretariat at the University of Abuja, to review the ongoing strike.

ASUU President, Emmanuel Osodeke, in a statement to announce the extension of the rollover strike, noted that the national executive council of the union “was disappointed that Government did not treat the matters involved with utmost urgency they deserved during the four-week period as expected of a reasonable, responsive, and well-meaning administration”.

He said NEC concluded that the government had failed to satisfactorily address all the issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) within the four-week roll-over strike period and resolved that the strike be rolled over for another eight (8) weeks.

The statement read in part: “The meeting was called to review developments since the Union declared a four weeks total and comprehensive roll-over strike action at the end of its NEC meeting at the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos on 12th-13th February, 2022.

“NEC noted that the Union’s leadership has held some interactive meetings with agents of government in the last four weeks that the strike action had lasted. However, NEC was disappointed that Government did not treat the matters involved with utmost urgency they deserved during the four-week period as expected of a reasonable, responsive, and well-meaning administration.

“NEC acknowledged the intervention efforts, in various ways, by patriots and friends of genuine national development (students, parents, journalists, trade union leaders, civil society activists etc.) to expeditiously resolve the crisis which Government’s disposition had allowed to fester. However, ASUU, as a union of intellectuals, has historic obligations to make governments honour agreements.”

Demands

Mr Osodeke said the strike continues over the government’s failure to “satisfactorily” implement the Memorandum of Action (MoA) it signed with the Union in December 2020 on funding for revitalisation of public universities (both Federal and States), renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ ASUU Agreement and the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS).

Other demands of the union as listed by ASUU include Earned Academic Allowances, State Universities, promotion arrears, withheld salaries, and non-remittance of third-party deductions.

Since the beginning of the strike on February 14, ASUU and the government delegation have met twice.

Deliberations so far

Earlier on Sunday, ASUU issued a statement on the controversy surrounding the UTAS that its technical team developed to replace the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) which is currently being used to pay its members’ salaries.

It was angered by the claim of the director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, who on Wednesday at the State House said UTAS failed three integrity tests of user acceptance, vulnerability and stress, that were conducted by his agency.

“We did all these three tests with them and the system couldn’t pass. We wrote the reports and submitted it back to the honourable minister, which he forwarded to all relevant institutions, including ASUU. As we speak now, ASUU is working, trying to fix all the issues we highlighted with the system and we will review it again. But that is just one half of the story,” Mr Inuwa said.

But ASUU insisted that UTAS scored both 85 and 77 per cent, which it noted are “high class grades in any known evaluation system”.

ASUU also threatened that it would demand that the initial NITDA Technical Report on UTAS, where it scored 85 per cent in User Acceptance Test (UAT) be made public if it (NITDA) continues to insist that UTAS failed the integrity tests.

ASUU said that NITDA carried out the first integrity test on August 10, 2021, at the NUC headquarters, noting that relevant government agencies and all the end-users in the university system were present.

The union added that all accepted UTAS as a suitable solution for salary payment in Nigerian universities.

ASUU also said; “However, in a curious twist of submission, the NITDA Technical Team, after conducting a comprehensive functionality test came out to say that out of 687 test cases, 529 cases were satisfactory, 156 cases queried, and 2 cases were cautioned.

“Taking this report on its face value, the percentage score is 77%. The question that arises from this is, can 77% in any known fair evaluation system be categorised as failure?”

ASUU said NITDA “in their desperation to justify their false assertions, threw up issues such as Data Centre and hosting of UTAS software which are clearly outside the rubrics of ASUU’s responsibilities in the deployment of UTAS.”

Renegotiation

PREMIUM TIMES had reported that the two most important demands for ASUU had included the renegotiation of the ASUU-FG 2009 agreement and the deployment UTAS for payment of its members salaries.

However, both have remained unresolved as the government only recently inaugurated another committee to be led by a former vice-chancellor and emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, Nimi Briggs.

Mr Briggs-led committee was given three months to complete the renegotiation of the agreement with all university-based unions including ASUU, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), National Association of Academic Technologist (NAAT) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Educational Institutions.

But ASUU has said it has nothing more to discuss on the agreement but the implementation. It said the three months given the committee to address the issues are not meant for the union.

Backstory

ASUU had embarked on a four-week warning strike on February 14th but to press home its demands, with the prominent ones being the renegotiation of the ASUU/FG 2009 agreement and the sustainability of the university autonomy by deploying UTAS to replace the government’s “imposed” (IPPIS).

Other demands include the release of the reports of visitation panels to federal universities, distortions in salary payment challenges, funding for revitalization of public universities, earned academic allowance, poor funding of state universities and promotion arrears.

The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, had days after the commencement of the strike constituted the white paper panel of the visitation panels.
But four weeks later, the government is yet to inaugurate the team to commence work.