The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has declared a one-month warning strike.
President of the union, Emmanuel Osodeke, announced this at a press conference on Monday after a two-day meeting of the union’s National Executive Council (NEC). According to him, the industrial action, which begins immediately, is “comprehensive and total”.
Some of the lecturer’s demands include the revitalisation of public universities, earned allowance, improved funding of state universities, and promotion arrears.
Others are the replacement of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) with its own University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) in the payment of emoluments to its member.
Before the latest move, the union had embarked on a sensitisation campaign across campuses in the country, leading to lecture-free periods. ASUU also said the 2009 agreement reached with the Federal Government ought to be reviewed every three years. But the union said since the deal was renegotiated, the Federal Government has failed to sign and implement the contents.
In 2020, ASUU had embarked on a nine-month strike over the government’s failure to honour its part of the deal. The lecturers, however, called off the strike after a series of meetings with the Federal Government.
Following the suspension, the Minister of Labour, Employment and Productivity, Chris Ngige, had vowed not to allow the lecturers to go on strike again.
“I will not give ASUU the opportunity to go on strike because I have three biological children that suffered from this imbroglio that we found ourselves in and about 15 people on my scholarship in Nigerian universities,” the Minister said days after the lecturers suspended the strike.
But in November, ASUU issued a three-week ultimatum to the government over the handling of the deal.
READ ALSO: ASUU to announce decision on strike today
Also. the union said it has concluded plans to sanction its members in the Federal University of Technology Owerri, FUTO, and the university’s Vice-Chancellor over the “illegal” promotion of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Pantami.
The union, which made this known during a press conference by its National President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke held in Lagos on Monday, said promoting the minister to a professor was illegal.
According to ASUU, it is impossible to be a minister and a lecturer at the same time, describing the promotion as encouragement of illegality.
The union gave Pantami the option of quitting his job as a minister, saying he is currently not qualified to be treated as a professor.
He said, “You cannot be a minister and a lecturer in a university. It is an encouragement of illegality.
“Pantami has to quit as a minister and be tried for doing double jobs within the same federal system. He is not qualified. Pantami should not be treated as a professor.
“We have resolved to sanction ASUU members involved in his promotion and the VC of FUTO.”
