Strike: ASUU dismisses FG threat, insists no agreement reached

The Academic Staff Union of Universities says no agreement has been reached with the Federal Government on any of the contentious issues holding back the resumption of students.

It also denounced a Twitter handle credited to the union as saying students should prepare for resumption nect week

Contrary to the position of the government that all the contentious issues except one have been resolved, President of ASUU, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, says none of their demands has been met by the government.

Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Sonny Echono, said in Abuja that only one issue was outstandaing.

Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, is also optimistic that the dispute would be resolved this week at the meeting of the two parties and the strike called off.

But Ogunyemi said they had not reached any agreement that could be described as concrete enough to make its lecturers resume from the seven-month strike.

The union also rejected claims that eight out of the nine demands raised by ASUU had been met.

He said, “As far as we are concerned, nothing has been delivered to our members and our members don’t want empty promises. Let us take the issues one after the other.

“The withheld salaries of our members which is between four to eight months have not been paid; if paid, accounts of our members would have been credited. Same for earned academic allowances, they are yet to be paid.”

The ASUU president also said visitation panels were yet to be constituted for the universities, adding that the issue relating to the proliferation of tertiary institutions by state governors had not been resolved.

He asked, “So, on which of these issues has the target beneficiaries seen any concrete action being taken? We are getting to understand the way people in government work.

“When they are still discussing with you, they will go to town and tell people what has not been done. Their intention is to paint ASUU as the aggressor.”

The ASUU president said the union would not feel threatened by a warning by the government that it could invoke labour laws if a resolution was not reached between the two parties.

The union went on strike to pressure the government to address its concerns about remuneration, working conditions, earned allowances and obsolete infrastructure, among others.

The union also kicked against a salary payment platform introduced by the government, the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) and has come up with its own system.

Meanwhile, ASUU has denounced the Twitter account, registered in its name, which asked students of public universities to prepare for resumption as a positive outcome was expected from the union’s meeting with the FG on Wednesday.

Ogunyemi described the information as fake news, saying that the union had not operated any Twitter account.

He said, “Those people are impersonators; they are impostors. They are using that Twitter handle and other Twitter handles to create confusion. We don’t know anything about the Twitter handle and we never said what they are attributing to us.

“That is not the way we share our information; we have a way of sharing our information and that is why we are advising our friendly media to always double-check with us anything they are in doubt of. ASUU will never say any such thing on Twitter.”