ASUU threatens to pull out of negotiaton with FG

Striking members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Thursday vowed to discontinue further deliberations with the Federal Government team over their current trade dispute unless the government guarantees that money meant for disbursement to solve the problem will not be diverted. ASUU President, Nasir Fagge Isa, told newsmen at the Afe Babalola Auditorium of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) that indications are widespread that the Governor Gabriel Suswam-led Implementation Committee might be used to deceive his union (ASUU), the students and parents.
Isa added that the alleged planned moves to hand over about 75 per cent of the N100 billion released fund for the Needs Assessment Report to the Ministry of Education and National Universities Commission (NUC) are illegal.
ASUU began its current strike on July 1 following failure of government to implement a 2009 agreement on public universities funding between the two parties. Condemning the moves to turn NUC and Ministry of Education to tenders boards, the ASUU chieftain threatened that the union and its members will not be ready to serve in a committee where money meant for the sector will be diverted. He added that it has been widely reported that government has declared that it will not implement the agreed massive injection of fund to revitalise the public universities but rather that it was only making “a dubious statement of supporting some universities with N100 billion.”
Isa stressed that government had also declared that it will not pay university academics their Earned Allowances which accumulated from 2009 to 2013. “ASUU was shocked at the level of deceit, dishonesty and lack of integrity displayed by government. Here was a government that had been propping on the union at least since the released of the MoU in January 2012.“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 SGF (Secretary to Government of the Federation) ridiculed the Agreement, the MoU and the Needs Assessment Report, mocking the Minister of Education to ‘go and give them N400billion’ at which members of the government team scornfully laughed,” he added.
Isa, however, said the union whose members constitute the intellectual cream of society and which operates on the basis of principles finds the event of Monday and other recent positions on the matter by government bewildering, embarrassing and highly unacceptable.“ASUU cannot believe that the Agreement, the MoU and the Needs Assessment Report undertaken and endorsed by the highest public officials in the land would be so blatantly ridiculed by the same people. “What has emerged is that government never intended to implement the provisions of any of these important documents, while publicly and privately encoring ASUU and the country to trust it and to believe that for once, it was determined to address the decay and rot in the universities, its true intervention all along was to take the country and ASUU for a costly ride,” he added. Giving reasons why the union was resolute to continue with the strike unless government implemented the 2009 agreement, Isa said the conditions of learning as portrayed in the Needs Assessment Report will move any right thinking person to tears. Describing government propaganda that portrayed Earned Academic Allowances as the major concern of the union as misleading, Isa said any solution by government must include the implementation of the funding component of the agreement.
However, reacting to ASUU’s threat, Suswam who is the Benue State Governor, appealed to the striking lecturers to cooperate with government to end the dispute in the interest of students. Suswam made the appeal in Abuja, but confirmed the ASUU’s fear that governing councils of the various universities have been invited to the Federal Capital Territory to help in the disbursement of N30 billion put forward for settlement of the earned allowances. He noted that there has been the problem of verifying those university workers entitled to get the earned allowance, hence the invitation to the governing councils to help out in claims verification. Suswam noted that get the first tranche of the disbursement would begin immediately government team met with the councils of the affected universities. “We still hope that given the seriousness which the Federal Government has put into this negotiations, ASUU will have to cooperate with government in bringing the children back to school,” he  said.

http://www.dailyindependentnig.com/2013/08/asuu-threatens-to-pull-out-of-negotiation-with-fg/

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