In the decision taken after their last meeting, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) President, Mr Emmanuel Osodeke, has confirmed that the union would be extending the strike by 12 weeks thereby turning it from a warning strike to an indefinite one.
The extension will be another 12 weeks, which will make it 20 weeks for students will stay at home.
Osodeke said in a telephone interview on Monday in Abuja, that it extended its roll-over strike for another 12 weeks to enable the Federal Government to address issues in concrete terms.
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He also made it clear that this extension was as a result of the Federal Government’s failure to implement the agreement entered with the union. The union had embarked on a nationwide warning strike from Feb. 14 to press home its members’ demands.
The first warning strike started on Feb. 14 for four weeks and the second strike commenced on March 15 for another four weeks, while the third one is announced on May 9 for another 12 weeks.
The lecturers’ demands had included funding for the Revitalisation of Public Universities, Earned Academic Allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS), and promotion arrears. Others were the renegotiation of the 2009 ASUU-FG Agreement and the inconsistency in the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that the union during its last National Executive Council (NEC) meeting noted that it was disappointed that the government had not treated the matters with the utmost urgency they deserved and as expected of a reasonable, responsive, and well-meaning administration.
“NEC viewed the government’s response so far as a continuation of the unconscionable, mindless and nonchalant attitude of the Nigerian ruling elite toward the proven path of the national development which is education.
“NEC, having taken reports on the engagement of the trustees and principal officers with the government concluded that the government had failed to satisfactorily address all the issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action within the four-weeks-roll strike period.
“NEC 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 government will resume as soon as possible, ”it said.