Hope rises as FGN, ASUU meet
The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) are to meet today as the union had expressed hope of calling off the strike if the government meets its demands.
The ASUU president, Emmanuel Osodeke, said this on Monday during an interview with Channels Television.
Osodeke lamented the lack of commitment on the part of the government toward ending the ongoing strike which has kept students out of school for 183 days now.
ASUU embarked on a strike on February 14, 2022, and has extended several times because their demands were not met.
READ ALSO: Again, ASUU extends strike by 4 weeks
Osodeke said the union’s platform, UTAS, was ready for application and that the issues of IPPIS and UTAS had been put to rest.
He insisted that the government has the capacity to meet the union’s demands and end the lingering strike action.
Osodeke said, “When they came with this IPPIS we told them that it cannot accommodate universities and that time, the accountant general then, and the person in charge of IPPIS met and we discussed and found out the weakness in IPPIS which they agreed that we should have a different solution.
“UTAS is ready and is the best. My happiness today about this strike is that for the first time they have tested IPPIS. It came in 2006 and it was never tested; they have been using it untested.
“I’m happy that the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy has been able to come out to say that there were multiple errors in IPPIS. Let them release the results it will tell us, UTAS came first in all the payment platforms.
“We and SSANU don’t have a problem on UTAS again, we are in unity now. We don’t have any faction of university lecturers. Whoever is doing that may be trying to use them against us. For you to have a union in a country like this it has to be registered.
“One, the issue of IPPIS and UTAS has to be put to rest because the test has been done.
“If this government is serious this strike wouldn’t last more than two weeks. We were supposed to go on strike in November and NIREC came in and intervened and we were considerate to them. They met with the president, and he set up a committee headed by the chief of staff that they should resolve it quickly but they did nothing.
“They set up the Nimi Briggs committee, we finished discussing with them they didn’t come back, the president directed the minister of education to resolve the strike within two weeks, two weeks passed, and they didn’t come back.”
Osodeke said ASUU will suspend the strike if the federal government agrees to its demands at today’s meeting.
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