The meeting between the Federal Government and the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) failed to yield a productive result as their conversation on ending the ongoing strike ended without an agreement.
ASUU and the government met on Tuesday at the headquarters of the National Universities Commission (NUC) in Abuja and was headed by Professor Nimi Briggs, with high hopes of resolving the impasse. The meeting lasted for about three hours and within that time, no agreement was reached. The six-month-old strike by public university lecturers is set to continue.
A senior member of ASUU, who craved anonymity, said that members of the Briggs renegotiation committee did not come with any new offer on the table for the ASUU leadership and instead just begged them to put an end to the ongoing strike.
“The committee pleaded with the lecturers to suspend the ongoing strike, with promises that their concerns will be included in the 2023 budget.”
ASUU president Emmanuel Osodeke on Monday night said the union has reached an agreement with the government to adopt the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) as the payment platform of lecturers and suspend the strike.
“We have not had any serious communication though they have invited us for a meeting on one issue, tomorrow (Tuesday), which is the issue of renegotiation,” Osodeke said on Television programme “Politics Today”.
“You know that there are seven issues why we are on strike. They are inviting us for discussion on the issue of renegotiation, tomorrow, which is renegotiation of the 2009 agreement.
ASUU has been on strike since February 14 over the government’s failure to implement its demands on salaries and allowances of lecturers, improved funding for universities as well as the adoption of UTAS against the federal government’s preferred payment platform — Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
The strike has shut federal government-owned universities for 183 days with President Muhammadu Buhari urging the ASUU to allow students return to class.
