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Peter Obi who is the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party and the former Governor of Anambra State has come out to challenge the Federal Government of Nigeria to openly rise to the occasion and resolve the six months old nationwide strike which has been embarked upon by university lecturers under the umbrella of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Obi who had vested about this on his verified Twitter account had also noted that it’s unconscionable, worrisome and unacceptable that the federal government of Nigeria will allow such an industrial action to become almost intractable to the detriment of millions of students.
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He had also suggested that it is time for the federal government to engage in collaborative negotiations with ASUU, and in good faith ensure the strike is resolved as soon as possible so that campuses can be reopened and students return to classes.
It can also be recalled that some of the members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of ASUU on Monday supported the decision for an indefinite strike after they claimed that federal government was unwilling to meet their demands which led to the strike in February.
ASUU President Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, in the communique released at the end of the NEC, said: “For the avoidance of doubt, none of the issues that forced our Union to resume the suspended strike as listed in the December 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) has been satisfactorily addressed by the Government to date.’
“The draft renegotiated FGN/ASUU agreement (second draft) remains unsigned; the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) has not been adopted and deployed to replace the discredited Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS); and the White Papers on Visitation Panels to Federal Universities, if ready as claimed by Government more than six months ago, are nowhere to be found.
“Similarly, Government has not delivered on the promised balance of one tranche of the revitalization fund more than one year after, the outstanding two tranches of the Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) have not been released; and nothing has since happened on the promised support for amendment to the law of the National Universities Commission (NUC) to stem the tide of proliferation of universities, especially by the state governments.”
Prof Osodeke had revealed that the NEC was utterly disappointed in representatives of government, especially the Minister of Education, for the deliberate falsehood and misrepresentation of facts aimed at scoring cheap political gains.
