By Richard Akintade, Osogbo
As part of their support to the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), some pupils from a private nursery and primary school staged a peaceful protest in Osun state on Monday.
Recalled that a video surfaced on Monday morning showing kids taking to the streets, telling the general public of their dissatisfaction with the way federal government has been handling the ASUU strike.
According to our correspondent, the school involved include Sunshine Nursery and Primary School, Ile-Ife.
From the circulated video, students of the primary school could be seen protesting in front of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) campus gate in support of ASUU.
ASUU had accused the federal government of reneging on the agreements it reached to suspend its last strike in 2020.
The ASUU has been on strike for the last six months, bringing educational activities across many government-owned tertiary institutions to a standstill over unmet demands.
Polytechnic staff and college of education lecturers also lamented their own unmet demands.
As the strike dragged on, several unions began to resort to solidarity protests, the last of which is the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) as well as the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, who had already declared a 2-day solidarity strike all over the country.
The union argued that the strike had followed the government’s attitude towards the renegotiation of salaries and allowances as well as the adoption of the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) payroll software.
The union rejected government’’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), claiming it is “inconsistent”.
The government referred UTAS to the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to conduct a user acceptance test (UAT).
The proposed alternative payroll software also underwent vulnerability assessment and penetration test (VAPT) ahead of possible deployment.
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