As lovers readied their plans for merriment to mark Saint Valentine’s Day on February 14, 2022, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, announced the commencement of strike.

The strike, which started off as a rollover strike, has since transited to an indefinite, total, and comprehensive strike.

Although stikes are not new to the Nigerian education sector, their duration and consistency give cause for worry. Barely do you meet a graduate from a public university in Nigeria who did not experience an ASUU strike before graduation. Prior to the ongoing strike, students were forced to spend nine months at home in 2020 due to a strike that was suspended after the President Muhammadu Buhari administration committed to addressing the demands of the union.

Consequently, to tackle one of the mainstream issues raised by ASUU, government set up a committee headed by Prof. Munzali Jubril to negotiate with ASUU on a new salary scale for academics in the nation’s universities. While the constitution of the committee may have seemed like an act in good faith, a few months down the line, after the committee completed its collective bargaining with the union, the federal government failed to implement the agreements reached.
Instead, a new committee was set up. The constitution of the new committee was not done until the union embarked on the ongoing strike. The Nimi Briggs committee was inaugurated in March to negotiate and come up with a new proposal on a salary structure. The Briggs committee, in collaboration with the ASUU leadership and other relevant agencies of government, engaged in a new round of negotiations.

In June, there was excitement in the public sphere as there were hopes of an end in sight when the committee concluded its task and came up with a draft agreement. The agreement was to be assented to by the federal government and the union.

However, all hope was dashed when the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige publicly criticized the committee for arriving at what he described as a 109-185 percent increase in the salary of academics.

Ngige added that ASUU leadership insisted that critical federal government ministries and agencies such as the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Budget Office of the Federation, National Salaries Income and Wages Commission, and Office of Head of Service of the Federation recuse themselves from the sitting of the committee. This claim was refuted by the Briggs committee in a statement. They insisted that the team imbibed strict adherence to best practices while discharging its duty.

Unlike in recent strikes when ASUU had several demands, the union appears to be prioritizing the review of their welfare package and the deployment of the locally developed University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, as a payment platform. The union faulted the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, IPPIS, for its inconsistencies and for not fitting the peculiarities of the university system.

Continue reading here: https://dailyinfo.ng/the-devils-and-saints-of-ASUU-strike/

FG really needs to do more

The battle continues while students suffer