The Academic Staff Union of Universities, or ASUU, and the Federal Government are still at odds since the union's demands have not been satisfied, according to information obtained by DAILY POST. This issue will be carried over to the president-elect Bola Tinubu's administration.
Recall that in 2022, the union shut down all public institutions nationwide for at least eight months due to the federal government's refusal to comply with its demands.
The federal government took ASUU to the National Industrial Court after negotiations broke down and several failed attempts to settle the problems and get the teachers back in the classroom in 2022.
As a result, the Court agreed to the government's request for an injunction allowing ASUU members to return to work while the case is still pending.
After the union complained, the appeals court backed the judge's decision to allow ASUU to begin work.
The appeals court gave ASUU until October 14 to comply with its ruling or face contempt charges. This resulted in the extended industrial action being stopped on October 14.
The union is requesting the following, among many other things:
funding for tertiary institutions' revitalization
Following the union's concern about the poor condition of Nigerian universities, the Federal Government agreed between 2009 and 2013 to inject a total of N1.3 trillion into public institutions, both state and federal, over the course of six tranches, beginning in 2013.
The FG was required by the agreement to disburse N200 billion in 2013 and N220 billion over the course of the next five years.
After disbursing the first tranche, the administration stopped doing so, sparking a new dispute. While promising N25 billion in 2020, the federal government released N20 billion in 2017.
The union, however, rejected the proposal and insisted for N110 billion, which represents 50% of a tranche of N220 billion that it had originally wanted. The government declined, citing a lack of resources, but the union was insistent.
The FG had requested ASUU to identify alternative financing sources in an effort to put the problems to bed.
Reimbursement of unpaid earned academic awards (EAA)
The Federal Government had made a 2009 promise to pay lecturers EAA, but the deal was never put into effect because the problem persisted for years.
Even though the FG promised to pay the first installment of the backlog of allowances in November 2019 and the second installment by August 2020, it still didn't follow through.
ASUU also urged that beginning with the 2019 budget, EAA payments be mainstreamed into annual budgets.
In 2020, the FG agreed to pay N40 billion. The government asserted that it had provided N22.127 billion in earned benefits for university staff workers, including academic and non-academic, to 38 institutions.
26% of the budget is set aside for the education sector.
The organization has previously fought for the allocation of 26% of Nigeria's annual budget for education, with 50% of that amount going to universities.
Implementation of UTAS (University Transparency and Accountability Solution).
ASUU had rejected the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), a payment platform put forth by the FG, for a variety of reasons.
The union had contended that the system would make university operations challenging and ineffective, claiming that universities use a flexible payroll system to ensure flexible hiring of lecturers and to draw scholars from all over the world, among other things.
The Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)'s integrity test was allegedly passed by the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), which was introduced by ASUU under the pretext that it had been successful.
Some stakeholders said that the IPPIS is a foreign platform while UTAS is a locally designed system, and that the government need to give UTAS priority in order to value local content.
According to BEVIBESHUB, President Muhammadu Buhari approved N320,345,040,835 as the 2023 intervention fund for public tertiary educational institutions in the nation just two weeks earlier, on April 4.
This information was provided by Sonny Echono, the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), at the Fund's annual strategic planning meeting with all heads of beneficiary institutions.
The disbursement of N320.3 billion as an intervention fund for the institutions, according to the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO), is still the most in the previous 30 years.
The current administration, according to ASUU National President Professor Emmanuel Osodeke in a statement to the Daily Post, does not value education.
He clarified that the union's current requests did not include the N320.3 billion, noting that they had fought for it since 1994.
ASUU president told BEVIBESHUB that the union is eagerly anticipating working with the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, noting that the President Buhari-led government would be leaving office in the coming weeks.
The Federal Government has not complied with our demands, he declared. We do not include the N320.3 billion in our demands. In 1994, we battled for this. It is not financed by the federal government. Taxpayers who work in the public sector pay for it.
"Our strategy is to see how we can work with the next administration in the hopes that, in contrast to the current administration, which doesn't care about education, the new administration will prioritize education."
Tinubu, the president-elect, had pledged to put education first if elected president during his campaigns in 2022. He is slated to assume office on May 29, 2023.
