BY: News Peddlers
Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, national president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, has stated that the union will meet with the Federal Government today to discuss its ongoing strike action.
According to the PUNCH, the government has made no effort to discuss their decision with the union's executives since the end of the renegotiation meeting led by Prof. Nimi Briggs.
Similarly, following the Briggs committee's submission of the ASUU report, the president gave the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, a two-week deadline to address ASUU's demands.
However, three weeks have passed and nothing has been done to prevent a one-month extension of the strike, which began on August 1, 2022.
As a result, Osodeke, who appeared on Channels Television's Politics Today program, which The PUNCH monitored on Monday, stated that the union was willing to call off the strike if the Federal Government agreed to its demands at today's meeting.
"If we go into that meeting tomorrow and the government says, 'We are willing to sign what you have bargained for,' the strike will be called off." He said.
In a previous interview, Osodeke condemned the fraudulent activities committed by the government using the university unions' rejection of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.
"We have been screaming all along that IPPIS is a fraud, that for 16 years they siphoned our money with IPPIS, that they punished our members because of it," he said. They now understand that some foreign bodies forced it on the people."
On February 14, 2022, ASUU began its ongoing strike after the Federal Government refused to meet some of its demands, including the release of revitalisation funds for universities, renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, release of earned allowances for university lecturers, and deployment of the UTAS payment platform for the payment of university lecturers' salaries and allowances.