The National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, has announced that the Federal Government will meet with them on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing industrial action as the strike enters its 183rd day.
It should be remembered that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari had not made an effort to communicate with the union's leadership since the conclusion of the renegotiation meeting chaired by Prof. Nimi Briggs.
The president also gave the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, a two-week deadline to meet the concerns of ASUU after the Briggs committee's ASUU report was submitted.
But despite the fact that the two weeks had passed three weeks earlier, nothing was done to prevent a one-month extension of the strike, which began on August 1, 2022.
Prof. Osodeke, who spoke on Monday's Politics Today programme on Channels Television, stated that the union would be willing to end the strike if the Federal Government acceded to its requests during the meeting today.
He said, “If we go into that meeting tomorrow and the government says, what you have bargained for, we are willing to sign, the strike will be called off.”
In an earlier interview, Osodeke condemned the fraudulent activities which the government used the university unions rejected the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system to commit.
He said, ‘’We have been shouting all along that IPPIS is a fraud, we have told them that for 16 years they siphoned our money with IPPIS, and they punished our members because of it. Now, they know, some foreign bodies forced it on the people.’’
ASUU commenced its ongoing strike on February 14, 2022, after the Federal Government refused to meet some of its demands including, the release of revitalization 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 salaries and allowances of university lecturers.