The University of Ibadan chapter of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), on Tuesday, February 8, 2022, said that the body will not take lightly and will resist the grand plan of the Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government to refuse to sign the renegotiated agreements.
Rising from their Congress at the University of Ibadan, presided over by the Chairman, Professor Ayo Akinwole, the congress of the University of Ibadan ASUU said it was fully supporting the decision of the leadership of the Union to fight for the welfare of members whose welfare had been neglected for over 13 years.
Briefing newsmen shortly after the congress, Professor Akinwole, who was flanked by the Secretary, Dr Chris Omoregie; Dr Dapo Adewole; Dr Sarah Akintola (Treasurer) and Dr Dapo Okareh (Internal Auditor), disclosed that the Union had been pushed to the wall and would now fight back.
According to Akinwole, the federal government had employed all formal and informal tactics to delay the renegotiation of 2009 agreements for four years and the new agreements were supposed to have been effective if the government had signed it in 2021.
He stated that rather than signing the agreement which took four years to be reached, “the federal government now said the agreement will now be tabled before another tripartite committee to consider it. We know this is a strategy of the Buhari administration to continue to impoverish the intellectual community.”
Akinwole also said that the Union had explored all possible avenues to make government do the needful and allow many stakeholders who approached the Union to mediate to prevent another strike, but “they all reported back to us that they were not able to convince government and that government was adamant.”
According to him, federal government was still owing varsities about N880 billion on revitalization of universities and also refused to mainstream earned academic allowances in the 2022 budget as promised.
The ASUU chairman also lamented that while Nigerian politicians are among the highest paid in the world, Nigerian lecturers were among the poorly paid in the world, with professors earning less than $1,000 dollars in a month.
On UTAS, Akinwole said “the NITDA examination rated the UTAS over 87percent and asked us to adjust the areas noted and resubmit for re-evaluation and start a new long process and we asked them what process did the fraudulent IPPIS go through by the NITDA before it was forced down with the monumental fraud discovered in it?
“The IPPIS which is foreign-imposed was not subjected to NITDA evaluation but a homegrown solution that was developed will be perpetually delayed so that the welfare of our members will be sacrificed to ensure that IPPIS continue to enrich their paymasters. We will not allow this. It is our destiny and we will fight for our own welfare.”
