ASUU assures that following breakthrough in negotiations with the federal government, the eight-month strike will end in few days.
By Emma Ogbuehi
Hopes rose on Monday on the eventual resolution of the impasse between the federal government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), leading to the closure of public universities in the last eight months.
ASUU President, Emmanuel Osodeke, who gave the assurance, expressed hope that the industrial action will end “in the next few days”. He made the disclosure at a meeting with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila and other legislators who had been interfacing between the Union and President Muhammadu Buhari.
“We hope that working together, in the next few days, we can put an end to this particular imbroglio in the Nigerian educational system,” ASUU President, Emmanuel Osodeke, said
Gbajabiamila had earlier on Friday given hints that the country would soon hear from President Buhari on the protracted ASUU strike.
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The strike began on February 14 following the failure of the Federal Government to renegotiate the agreement it signed with ASUU in 2009, demand by the teachers for the replacement of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), with the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), as the payment platform in the university sector, among others.
The lecturers insist that IPPIS has never been implemented in any university system anywhere. Among its drawbacks, they say, is that it will shut the door against foreign scholars, contract officers and researchers needed to be poached from existing universities to stabilize new ones.
But the Federal Government insists that the payment system is for transparency and neither intended to trample upon university autonomy nor designed to subsume the university into the civil service.
On Monday at a meeting with Gbajabiamila and other members of the green chamber, Osodeke urged the lawmakers to work alongside university lecturers to end the imbroglio.
He said, “Please, let all of us work together to put a beautiful end to this end to this thing we have started, so that every Nigerian will be proud that we have universities we can be proud of.
“Once again, I want to thank you. I also extend our appreciation to the president for intervening, I want to appeal that in the future, we should not allow strike to linger. Strike should not go beyond two days.
“If the way the National Assembly has intervened, if we had done that long ago, or those in charge of labour and education had done exactly this, we would not be where we are today. We would not have stayed more than two or three weeks on this strike. There is strike all over the world — UK, US, all over — but they don’t allow it to last.”
Counsel for ASUU, Femi Falana, had also spoken on the likelihood of the lecturers suspending the industrial action very soon. He gave the assurance in an interview with Channels Television.
“I am reasonably confident that the consultations between the House and the Presidency will yield positive results in the interest of the striking lecturers and the students,” he noted.
