The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has told the federal government it cannot fight ongoing insecurity in the country so long as it continued to keep students at home.
The union also asked Nigerians to hold the government accountable for its ongoing strike, explaining that it did everything possible to avert the situation to no avail due to government’s nonchalance to issues that led to its strike.
ASUU’s declaration came on a day the Federal Government said the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, was being once again subjected to integrity test to know its suitability as an alternative mode of payment as demanded by the union.
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This is even as ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, who stated this in his goodwill message at the Maiden Nigerian Medical Association,NMA’s Annual Lecture,in. Abuja, alleged that the ministers of education, labour and finance and the Chief of Staff to the President flouted President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive to engage it in a meeting to find immediate solutions to the crisis.
Speaking through his representative and Vice President of ASUU, Prof. Chris Piwuna, Osodeke,who spoke at the event, with the theme:”Brain Drain and Medical Tourism: The Twin Evil in Nigeria’s Health System”, explained that during a visit by the Sultan of Sokoto five weeks ago, the president directed the ministers and his chief of staff to immediately hold a meeting with ASUU for a quick resolution of the ongoing strike, alleging that they instead, ignored him.
He said only the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, NUC, had been attending its meeting since the strike started.
Noting that the theme of the NMA’s annual lecturre was on brain drain, he said:” That is what ASUU has been taking about for years.”
“We hope that the evil in the medical system which has transformed to all the sectors of the Nigerian state would be curtailed and brain drain will be a thing of the past but as it is now,the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the one keeping Nigerian students at home and Nigerians must rise to challenge this government for what they are doing. They cannot fight insecurity if they are keeping the student at home.”
” We have been talking about the state of the universities and how academic staff fare. We have been on strike for about eight to nine weeks now. The president of this country, President Muhammadu Buhari, had directed about five weeks ago, when the Sultan of Sokoto visited him, that the Minister of Education,Minister of Finance,the Minister of Labour and the Chief of Staff to the President should meet with us in his office, that has not been done.
“That meeting has not taken place. Outside the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, NUC,who has attended virtually all our meetings, not a single one of the ministers has been there, even the Minister of Labour himself.
“We have met with speaker of the House of Representatives about three times. We have met with the President of the Senate three times, we have met with the Sultan of Sokoto, we have met with Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the governor of Ekiti State,what else do you want us to do? What else do Nigerians want us to do?”
Turning to the guests in the hall,he said: “There are two vice chancellors seated in this hall, they know exactly what we mean when we say universities are not funded.”
He said payment of tuition by students as one of the ways of addressing poor funding was not the way to go, given that parents, especially at the local level, were finding it difficult to feed.
“Nigerians,you have been talking about people paying school fees, that tuition fees should be introduced, they said that is one way we can fund our universities. If we can all go to our local governments and just ask the people in our local governments, whether they can pay tuition, and they accept, we will go with it
“There is nothing we haven’t done to avoid strike. When we talk of tuition in our universities, it is as if parents don’t pay. You pay for your children off-campus, you pay for their feeding,you pay for their field trips, you pay for everything, and they say we should introduce tuition.
“Perhaps if majority of Nigerians in our local governments can feed, then we will say we are ready for it, other than that,we are not,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has said the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, was being once again subjected to integrity test to know its suitability as an alternative mode of payment as demanded by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU.
Recall that since the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, IPPIS, as the official mode of payment by the federal government, ASUU and other university-based unions such as the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Educational Institutions, NASU and the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT, had complained of the alleged malfunctioning of the system.
While ASUU has developed its own application, UTAS, to replace IPPIS, which is before the government, SSANU and NASU have also come up with U3PS, which they said they were ready to present to government.
Fielding questions from Vanguard in Abuja on efforts to resolve the face-off between government and the striking unions, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, said all the demands of the four university-based unions were being looked into.
“We are dialoguing, the committees are working, UTAS is being tested,” he said.
On the outcome of the meeting he had with the Nigeria Inter Religious Council, NIREC, co-chaired by the Sultan of Sokoto and the Chairman of Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, he said efforts made towards sorting out all the contentious issues were presented to the council.
He said: “I explained to them what had happened, where we are and that a lot of committees have been put up to work with education to get these things sorted out. And they have timelines, six weeks. So, ASUU has no business going on strike within that six weeks, they don’t have to. And by labor laws, once I am conciliating a matter, you don’t go on strike, you don’t continue with your strike.
“I have apprehended it, you know, so if they go on strike like that, they are forcing me to look at other areas of labor laws, because I cannot sit down as minister and a strike is going on and I am doing nothing. If I’m unable to apprehend it, then I should send it to higher bodies, National Industrial Court of Nigeria.”
Meanwhile, SSANU has said it would not suspend the ongoing strike until its members were paid the Minimum Wage arrears.
It also said that it was ready to present to the government its own alternative payment mode; the University Peculiar Personnel & Payroll System, U3PS, which is a multi-tenant system the union claimed would accommodate the peculiarities in the Nigerian university system.
President of SSANU, Comrade Mohammed Ibrahim, explained that the system handles all employees’ financial records in a hassle-free, automated fashion.
This includes employees’ salaries, bonuses, deductions, net pay, generation of pay-advice and other financial reports, using accounting best practices.
Asked whether the demands or agitations of the unions were wrong, he said: “What kind of question is that? Somebody says you should review his salary, how can it be a wrong demand? It is not a wrong demand by any standard anywhere in the world, it is not.
“But you discuss with your employers, that is how it is. And then he will give you his books and every other thing. And you look into the ability to pay phenomenon. It is a part of Decent Work Agenda and ILO Principles at Work. Can my employer afford this? That is it.
“So I am not against them demanding that and that is why I told the Ministry of Education to bring back the committee to look at the proposal that Professor Manzali Committee did because a lot of the members of the committee have left.
“So bring them back and look at this report and then you distill it and get something up for the higher body of government which is the Presidential Committee on Salaries for now.”
Noting that the strike by SSANU and NASU was new, Ngige said: “So I have asked their employers to go and look at it. Like you are talking about the staff schools, that issue is one that has long been and agreed on, especially on the ways and things to be implemented. So I don’t know… “
Reminded that the government has not fully implemented the National Industrial Court judgment on staff schools, he queried: “Are you sure government didn’t appeal the judgment? I think there is an appeal or something like that. But there’s an area of the judgment that governments said it will implement and the education said they will implement and I’m sure they have implemented that.”