The government of President Muhammadu Buhari has filed a lawsuit with Suit No. NICN/ABJ/270/2022 against the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at the National Industrial Court in Abuja.
The hearing will begin on Monday, September 12, 2022.
Since February 15, 2022, ASUU has been on strike in protest over the decline of the institutions’ infrastructure and the disregard for the welfare of its members.
The federal government and the ASUU leadership have engaged in a number of negotiations, but none of them has yielded a positive result.
However, after a meeting at the National University Commission’s office in Abuja last Tuesday, negotiations between the federal government and ASUU eventually came to a halt.
The federal government had previously stated that it would not sign any additional agreements that it could not carry out.
Malam Adamu Adamu, the minister of education, said this at a meeting of the provosts and vice presidents of federal universities held at the NUC’s office.
Adamu claimed that the government’s negotiating team with ASUU had received a warning from President Muhammadu Buhari not to sign an agreement that the government would not be able to uphold.
With the exception of the professorial cadre, who will receive a pay increase of 35%, the minister stated that the government has offered the union a wage increase of 23.5% for all categories of employees at federal universities. The government, according to him, has pledged to pay N150 billion “as funding for the revitalisation of federal universities, to be disbursed to the Institutions in the First Quarter of the year” in the 2023 budget.
A further announcement from the government stated that N50 billion would be set aside “in the 2023 Budget for the payment of outstanding arrears of earned academic allowances, to be paid in the first quarter of the year.”
However, the offer was rejected by ASUU and three other university unions, who said it was “inadequate to meet their individual requests needed to handle the difficulties facing the university system.”
