The Federal Government has reacted to the extension of the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Africa Today News, New York had earlier reported that ASUU on Monday extended the strike by eight weeks, saying it took the decision because the Federal Government failed to address the issues it raised in a 2020 FGN/ASUU agreement.
But contrary to ASUU claims, the Minister of State for Education, Mr Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba claimed the government met all the demands of the union.
Read Also: Strike: ASUU Set To hold Emergency NEC Meeting Today
In an interview with newsmen at the end of the commemoration of the 2022 Commonwealth Celebration in Abuja, Nwajiuba said all earned allowances, as well as the revitalisation funds demanded, had been released.
‘ASUU announced and we met and everything that they have demanded, we have done all of them including the earned allowances and the revitalisation fund; they choose to extend it for two months maybe,’ he said.
Disclosing the decision of the union on Monday after after an emergency meeting by National Executive Council of the Union, ASUU President, Professor Victor Emmanuel Osodeke said; ‘NEC, having taken reports on the engagements of the Trustees and Principal Officers with the Government, concluded that 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 weeks to give Government more time to address all the issues in concrete terms so that our students will resume as soon as possible,’ Osodeke said.
‘The roll-over strike shall commence by 12.01am on Monday, 14% March, 2022.’
According to him, ‘NEC viewed Governments response, so far, as a continuation of the unconscionable, mindless, and nonchalant attitude of the Nigerian ruling elite towards the proven path of national development which is education.’
He noted that 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.
Osodeke explained that the strike action came on the heels of Government’s failure to satisfactorily implement the Memorandum of Action (MoA) it signed with the Union in December 2020 on funding for revitalization of public universities (both Federal and States), renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), Earned Academic Allowances, State Universities, promotion arrears, withheld salaries, and non remittance of third party deductions.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK