FG not ready to end strike – ASUU

LAGOS— After 10 unsuccessful meetings
with the Federal Government, the Academic
Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, yesterday
said government was not ready to end the 8-
week-old strike, lamenting that government
displayed dishonesty and lack of integrity
during negotiations.
At a briefing in Lagos, ASUU’s President,
Dr. Isa Faggae, claimed that government
had declared it would not implement the
agreed injection of funds to revitalise the
public universities, but was only making a
dubious statement of supporting some
universities with N100 billion.
He said: “Government had also declared
that it will not pay university academics
their earned allowances which accumulated
from 2009 to 2013. Rather, it is talking
about providing N30 billion to assist
various Governing Councils of Federal
Universities to defray the arrears of N92
billion owed to all categories of staff in the
university system.”
Narrating the union’s experience at the last
meeting with the Government held on
Monday, Faggae said: ASUU was shocked by
the level of deceit, dishonesty, and lack of
integrity displayed by the Government.
Never in the history of ASUU-Government
relations have we, as a union, ever
experienced the kind of volte-face exhibited
by Government. At one stage in the
interaction, the Secretary to the
Government Federation ridiculed the
agreement, the MoU and the Needs
Assessment Report, mocking the Minister of
Education to “go and give them N400
billion,” at which members of the
government scornfully laughed.”
He argued that the Governor Gabriel
Suswam-led Implementation Committee was
being used as smokescreen to “deceive
ASUU, Nigerian students and their parents,
as well as other unsuspecting members of
the public on the purportedly released N100
billion for the implementation of the Needs
Assessment Report.
First, he said, government plans to divert
the regular yearly allocations to
universities by Tertiary Education Trust,
TETFund, to make at least 70% of the N100
billion. This is unacceptable to ASUU. It is
like robbing Peter to pay Paul, since the
idea of revitalization took full cognizance of
the intervention role TETFund ab-initio.
“Again, contrary to subsisting operational
procedures, about 75% of the money meant
for revitalizing universities would not be
released to them as the Suswam Committee
plans to hand over construction of the
hostel projects to the Federal Ministry of
Education and/or the National Universities
Commission, for implementation. This is
illegal; neither the ministry nor NUC is
backed by laws of Nigerian Public
Universities to divert monies meant for the
development of these institutions into
centrally executed projects.”
Dr. Faggae questioned the committee’s
motives for proposing to commit N1.6
million to a bed space, instead of N200, 000
to N400, 000, saying, “We see a
continuation of outrageous contract regimes
in the plan to centrally coordinate the
construction of student hostels as done in
the case of the 12 newly established Federal
Universities with TETFund resources. The
NUC has transmuted itself into a “Tenders’
board” which awarded contracts for the
construction of 560 bed spaces hostel for
each university at a whooping sum of 1.2
bn. This contract sum translates into N2.143
million per bed space.”