The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Ibadan chapter on Tuesday February 8, 2022, endorsed a declaration of ASUU’s nationwide strike to demand for fulfillment of the renegotiated agreement between it and Federal Government.
The Union, therefore, declared a lecture free day for tomorrow and rally to sensitise the public on the looming strike, saying it would resist the grand plan of the President Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Government to refuse signing the renegotiated agreements.
At the Congress of the Union in UI, it was unanimously agreed that the chapter would fully support the decision of the national leadership of ASUU to fight for the welfare of her members, whose welfare has been neglected for over 13 years.
Briefing newsmen shortly after the congress, Professor Ayo Akinwole, flanked by the Secretary, Dr Chris Omoregie, Dr Sarah Akintola (Treasurer), Dr Dapo Okareh (Internal Auditor) and Dr Dapo Adewole, revealed that the Union has been pushed to the wall and is ready to fight back with all its strength.
According to Akinwole, the Federal Government has employed all formal and informal tactics to delay the renegotiation of the 2009 agreements for four years and the new agreements was supposed to have been effective if the government had signed it in 2021.
He hinted that rather than signing the agreement which took four years to be reached, “the Federal Government now said the agreement would now be tabled before another tripartite committee for consideration. We know this is a strategy of the Buhari administration to continue to impoverish the intellectual community.”
Akinwole also said that the Union has explored all possible avenues to make the government do the needful and allow many stakeholders who approached the Union to mediate to prevent another strike but “they all reported back to us that they were not able to convince government and that government was adamant.”
According to him, Federal Government is still owing varsities about 880billion on revitalization of universities and also refused to mainstream earned academic allowances in the 2022 budget as promised.
The ASUU boss also lamented that while Nigerian politicians are among the highest paid in the world, Nigerian lecturers are among the poorly paid in the world with professors earning less than $1,000 dollars in a month.
On UTAS, Akinwole said “the NITDA examination rated the UTAS over 87percent and asked us to adjust the areas noted and resubmit for re-evaluation and start a new long process and we asked them what process did the fraudulent IPPIS go through by the NITDA before it was forced down with the monumental fraud discovered in it? The IPPIS which is foreign imposed was bot subjected to NITDA evaluation but a homegrown solution that was developed will be perpetually delayed so that the welfare of our members will be sacrificed to ensure that IPPIS continue to enrich their paymasters. We would not allow this. It is our destiny and we will fight for our own welfare.”
