The National Executive Council (NEC) of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) held an emergency meeting on Sunday, 13th March 2022 at the Comrade Festus Iyayi National Secretariat, University of Abuja.
In a statement, the Union President Emmanuel Osodeke said the meeting was called to review developments since the Union declared a four-week total and comprehensive roll-over strike at the end of its NEC meeting at the University of Lagos, Akoka, in Lagos on 12th-13th February, 2022.
The strike came on the heels of Government’s failure to satisfactorily implement the Memorandum of Action (MoA) it signed with the Union in December 2020 on funding for revitalization of public universities (both Federal and States), renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), Earned Academic Allowances, State Universities, promotion arrears, withheld salaries, and non-remittance of third-party deductions.
He said NEC noted that the Union’s leadership had held some interactive meetings with agents of government in the last four weeks that the strike had lasted.
However, NEC was disappointed that Government did not treat the matters involved with utmost urgency they deserved during the four-week period as expected of a reasonable, responsive, and well-meaning administration.
Osodeke said NEC viewed Government’s response, so far, as a continuation of the unconscionable, mindless, and nonchalant attitude of the Nigerian ruling elite towards the proven path of national development which is education.
He added that the NEC acknowledged the intervention efforts, in various ways, by patriots and friends of genuine national development (students, parents, journalists, trade union leaders, civil society activists etc.) to expeditiously resolve the crisis which Government’s disposition had allowed to fester.
However, ASUU, as a union of intellectuals, has historic obligations to make governments honour agreements.
NEC, having taken reports on the engagements of the Trustees and Principal Officers with the Government, concluded that Government had failed to satisfactorily address all the issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) within the four-week roll-over strike period and resolved that the strike be rolled over for another eight weeks to give Government more time to address all the issues in concrete terms so that students would resume as soon as possible.
The roll-over strike shall commence by 12.00am on Monday, 14th March, 2022.
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