TheCable

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says its industrial action can end in one week if the federal government meets its demands.

ASUU had declared a nationwide strike on Monday following a two-day deliberation of the union’s national executive council (NEC).

Speaking on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, Christopher Piwuna, ASUU’s vice-president, said the strike can be called off as soon as government does what it is “supposed to do”.

“We hope that the one-month warning strike will allow the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) to prove themselves and the chief of staff will speak to these individuals to say that the needful should be done,” the ASUU VP said on Tuesday.

“If they do what they are supposed to do, then we don’t have to go on strike for one month, it can end in a week.

Commenting on some of the union’s grievances, Piwuna said: “We were told to bring a schedule by the federal government on how to pay the N170 billion revitalisation fund and to make it spread for one and half years but not a dime has been given to the universities since last year.

“We suggested to the government in March 2021 to bring N42.5 billion every quarter to help them pay up gradually and this is one of the reasons for the strike because nothing has been paid since then. The issue of U-tax is another that has been a huge challenge to public universities.

“We asked the government to mainstream the earned allowances which is also a reason for the strike, to pay the allowances with our salaries. The money has been owed since last year but they did not, so we are going to have a backlog for 2021 and 2022 because the budget has been passed.

“We know that times are hard and N1.3 trillion can not be coughed out easily, so we said the N170 billion which is the second batch will also be too heavy for the government to give such an amount so we came up with a plan that let the N170 billion be broken down.”

Piwuna said while he agrees that lecturers “need to consider the good of the educational system,” he believes there is also a need to “cut out the excesses of the government which can be used to solve certain problems”.