After 10 unsuccessful meetings with Federal Government, the
Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has said government is
not ready to end the 8-week-old strike, lamenting that FG
displayed dishonesty and lack of integrity during all negotiations.
“ASUU is shocked by the level of deceit, dishonesty, and lack of
integrity displayed by this Government. Never in the history of
ASUU-Government relations have we, as a union, ever
experienced the kind of volte-face exhibited by this
Government .”
At a briefing in Lagos, ASUU President, Dr. Isa Faggae, said:
Government had declared it would not implement the agreed
injection of funds to improve public universities, but is only making
a dubious statement of supporting some universities with N100
billion.
He added: “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: “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.”
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