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The ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU) has been extended for four weeks.
This was the decision of the National Executive Committee(NEC) of the union which met in Abuja on Sunday following failure of the Federal government to meet its demands.
ASUU went on a one-month strike on February 14, 2022, over the non-implementation of the Memorandum of Action which it entered with the Federal Government and the insistence of the government on the adoption of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) as the payment platform for all federal workers.
ASUU on his part, had proposed UTAS as an alternative platform for the payment of University teachers salaries following the alleged discrepancies highlighted in the use of IPPIS.
ASUU, in a communique after the meeting, stated that the decision was to give the Federal Government more time to meet its demands.
The communique which was signed by the President of ASUU, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, said, “Following extensive deliberations and taking cognisance of government’s past failures to abide by its own timelines in addressing issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action, NEC resolved that the strike be rolled over for four weeks to give government more time to satisfactorily resolve all the outstanding issues.
“The role-over strike action is with effect from 12.01a.m. on Monday, 1st August, 2022.”
It stated that the extension of the strike by one month was as a result of the lack of seriousness on the part of government to address its demands.
“Since there is no sign of any serious commitment on the part of the government, there was no need for the NEC to consider suspending the strike. Can anybody say this is what the government is offering?” the communique further stated.
“They were the ones who set up the Briggs Committee and it made recommendations and the government jettisoned the report
“The government is not sincere. Let us assume that we are asking too much, which is not even the situation, is it not that the government will come out with its offers and we will deliberate whether to accept or not. We have been saying it that they want to kill the university system just as they did public primary and secondary schools.”
ASUU posited that the ongoing trial of the former Accountant General was a vindication of ASUU’s position on the fraud infested IPPIS.
The union also knocked the federal government over its inability to tackle the security situation in the country, which has resulted in the closure of schools in the Federal Capital Territory(FCT).