Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Friday, appealed to President Bola Tinubu to set machineries in motion for the implementation of the renegotiated agreement between it and the Federal Government in line with the Collective Bargaining principles as enshrined in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention.
ASUU also called on well-meaning Nigerians, public-spirited individuals and lovers of education across the globe to prevail on the Tinubu-led government, as well as the 36 states governors to take “urgent and positive steps” that will arrest what they described as “mindless and deliberate” destruction of the education sector in the country by those in position of authority.
The Lagos Zone of ASUU made the appeal on Friday during a press conference addressed by its Zonal Coordinator, Professor Adelaja Odukoya at the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago Iwoye, Ogun State.
Odukoya declared that Tinubu’s intervention would not only be saving the university system from collapse, but also ensure that the lecturers were not goaded into another round of avoidable strike due to their conditions of service.
He said that the union was seeking an interface with the President on how to resolve all issues plaguing the public universities in Nigeria, stressing that his intervention would be portraying him as living good up to his electioneering promises to the citizens that no child of school age would stay at home due to avoidable industrial unrest in the nation’s educational institutions.
Prof Odukoya listed some of the issues in the union’s agitations to include the refusal of the Federal Government to sign and implement the concluded renegotiated agreement which ASUU-FGN entered into since year 2009; poor funding of the existing universities; “proliferation and mushrooming of universities” by state governments, as well as the non-payment of the withheld salaries and arrears of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) among others.
Others contentious issues according to Odukoya include non-payment of the withheld salaries and arrears of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) since year 2020; injurious downside of the discredited Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), among others.
“Before another round of crisis, the issues in contentions do not require rocket science to resolve. All the issues in contention can be immediately resolved if President (Bola) Tinubu as the Commander- in-Chief would perform the functions of his office by immediately interface directly with the leadership of our union.
“The deliberate refusal of corrupt Government and Ministry officials to migrate the University Payroll System away from IPPIS is unfortunate, condemnable and a confirmation that Nigeria is a becoming lawless State. It confirms that certain beneficial elements within government and their collaborators are bent on continuing to defraud our members and the universities,” Odukoya said.
Declaring the newly introduced students loan scheme as means of creating “an army of disenchanted youth who start their life with a burden of debt, and suicidal tendencies”, ASUU also called for the review and strengthening of the National Universities Commission’s (NUC) laws to arrest the negative trends.
“We pray Government would see reason and heed this call. ASUU would however wish to put the Nigerian public on notice that Government should be held responsible if our public universities was again goaded into another preventable crisis,” he added.
