FG not ready to end strike – ASUU

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.”