Recall Briggs’ Renegotiated Draft Agreement, FULAFIA ASUU Chairman Tells Tinubu

The chairman, Federal University Lafia branch of the Academic Union of Universities (ASUU), Comrade Sunday Orinya, has called on President Bola Tinubu to recall the Professor Nimi Briggs renegotiated draft agreement for signing and implementation without further delay.

He told journalists in Lafia yesterday that the implementation of the Briggs’s 2022 document would end the lingering crisis between ASUU and the federal government.

Comrade Orinya said the first draft agreement between ASUU and the federal government team was coordinated by Prof Munzali Jibril, who took over the chairmanship of the joint renegotiating committee from Dr Wale Babalakin, noting that the outcome was submitted in May 2021, but was rejected by the same government which constituted it a year later.

“The second and current draft was arrived at after the government’s team was reconstituted in April 2022 under the chairmanship of Emeritus Prof Nimi Briggs.

“The Briggs-led committee commenced work with extensive consultations with heads of relevant units in the MDAs and shared a written submission of the findings with ASUU. We were reassured then, that the new committee had a clear mandate to review the Munzali-led committee’s report through a collective bargaining process in tandem with the principles of the ILO.

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“It was that process that produced the Draft Renegotiated Agreement on June 16, 2022. the government team was expected to present the Draft document to its principal as was done a year earlier,” he explained.

He noted that the need for another nation-wide strike action becomes compelling against the backdrop of the total collapse of all forms of collective bargaining, which he said, is indicative that the federal government has abandoned the agreement.

He opined that the failure by the President Tinubu led government to act decisively on the matter despite reminders by the union’s leadership and constant appeal by stakeholders for urgent intervention, showed an apparent lack of interest to address the anomaly.

Comrade Orinya, therefore, urged the president to save public universities from total collapse by signing and implementing the document without delay, as doing so is the only panacea to ending the long-drawn face-off between the union and federal government.