The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has commenced zonal and branches consultation to begin nationwide strike.
President of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke in a conversation with AIT News on Tuesday evening said the decision was reached after about three days marathon meeting of its National Executive Council.
This is coming after the expiration of its three weeks strike notice to the federal government.
Recall that the union had issued a three- week strike notice to the federal government to address all it’s demands.
ASUU’ s grievances include unpaid earned academic allowance and non-implementation of universities revitalisation fund.
ASUU had held several meetings with the federal government which have apparently yielded no results leading to the latest strike notice issued by the University lecturers.
The union had announced its readiness to embark on another round of industrial action following the ‘government’s unfaithfulness’ in implementation of the Memorandum of Action (MoU) it signed with the union upon which the last strike action was suspended.
ASUU President noted on Tuesday that the federal government is only trying to meet just one of its demands, which is the universities revitalisation fund by promising to release N30 billion.
He noted that the federal government should be held responsible should ASUU be forced to activate the strike it patriotically suspended.
Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemaka Nwajuiba said on Monday that the Federal Government is doing everything possible to prevent another ASUU strike with the release of N30 billion and processes to pay lecturers salaries promptly.
But that doesn’t seem to be go down well with the lecturers as Osodeke stressed that ASUU member are not strike mongers, but the Nigerian government may eventually succeed in pushing them into an unfortunate industrial action.
ASUU’s demands include non-payment of owed salaries to some of its members, proper administration of N22 billion earned academic allowance to all university-based unions and he non-release of integrity test result conducted on the Universities Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, an alternative created by ASUU to address the lingering issue associated with the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System, IPPIS.
ASUU looks set for another round of industrial action barely a year after it called of the last strike.
