The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has commenced an indefinite nationwide industrial action.
The National President of the union, Dr. Biodun Ogunyemi, announced
this on Monday at a meeting of the National Executive Council (NEC) of
ASUU in Abuja.
He said during the strike, there shall be no
teaching, no examination and no attendance of statutory meetings of any
kind in any of the union’s branches across the country.
He declared a ‘total, comprehensive and indefinite’ nationwide
strike after a nationwide consultation with members at an emergency NEC
meeting held on Saturday, August 12, 2017.
He explained in a
statement issued after Saturday’s meeting that their decision followed
the failure of the government to fully implement the 2009 FGN-ASUU
Agreement and the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
The ASUU
president added that related demands made by the union were yet to be
addressed, which was why they resolved to embark on an indefinite
strike from Sunday, August 13, 2017.
Some of the key outstanding
issues discussed at the meeting were the payment of fractions/
non-payment of salaries; non-payment of Earned Academic Allowances
(EAA); non-release of operational license of NUPEMCO and the
non-implementation of the provisions of the 2014 Pension Reform Act with
respect to retired professors and their salaries.
Others include
the removal of Universal Staff Schools from funding by government; funds
for the revitalisation of Public Universities (Implementation of Needs
Assessment Report), as well as the poor funding of existing State
Universities and proliferation of universities by their visitors among
other issues.
The union had embarked on a six-month strike between
July and December 2013, but the strike was suspended when the
government signed a MoU with the lecturers following a meeting with
former President Goodluck Jonathan.
ASUU, however, claimed that of
all the items contained in the MoU, only the N200b out of a total of
N1.3tr of the Public Universities Revitalisation (Needs Assesment) fund
was released.
The union had also embarked on a warning strike in November 2016 to press for the implementation of the 2013 MoU.
However, the government did not implement the understanding reached with the union based on an intervention by the Senate.
ASUU
said it had also met with the 2009 Agreement implementation Monitoring
Committee (IMC) and had written several letters and press releases on
the outstanding issues to no avail.
