Prof. Adelaja Odukoya, the Coordinator of the Union’s Lagos zone, made the appeal on Friday at the Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago Iwoye, Ogun State, at a press conference.
According to ASUU, the President would prevent the impending collapse of the country’s public universities if he were to take the appeal seriously and act appropriately. The Union continued by saying that it would also make sure that the lecturers’ current circumstances of employment did not lead them into another round of needless strike action.
According to Prof. Odukoya, the Union wanted to speak with the President about how to address every problem affecting Nigeria’s public universities.
“The government had tested the ASUU’s patience beyond bearable limits by not signing and implementing the renegotiated 2009 ASUU-FGN since 2021 after it was concluded and to which both the Government and ASUU committed massive resources at the time,” he said. In order to prevent yet another round of industrial crises in the country’s public universities, he asked the Tinubu-led Federal Government to move quickly to put the agreement into effect and sign it.
He listed additional issues that the federal government needs to address immediately, such as the proliferation of state and federal universities, inadequate funding, irregular staff salary payments, non-payment or release of check-off and other third-party deductions, and deteriorating and dilapidated infrastructure.
The coordinator for the Lagos zone expressed regret over how visits from federal and state colleges have transformed university establishments into community projects. “For the ninth time, our Union draws the public’s attention to the fraudulent growth and encroachment of institutions by the Federal Government and Visiting Scholars at State institutions.
While most Federal and State governments have not been providing adequate funding for already-existing universities (inadequate subventions, non-release of monthly subventions, irregular staff salary payments, deteriorating and dilapidated infrastructures, non-payment/release of check-off and other third party deductions, etc.), visitors to Federal and State universities have transformed university establishments into constituency projects. This is the most unsettling aspect of this anomaly.
This is a clearly damaging, backward, and unacceptable development. Our Union now demands that the National University Commission’s laws be reviewed and strengthened in order to halt the downward trend. not paying arrears for earned academic accommodations (EAA) and withheld salaries.
“Colleagues and fellow press citizens, it is no longer news that the Federal Government is still retaining three and a half months’ worth of our members’ salaries in light of the government’s intransigence, which led to the last industrial action on the one hand, and the severe economic difficulties the country is currently facing on the other.”
Furthermore, there are still unpaid Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) arrears until 2020. This cruel, unprogressive, destructive, anti-labour, and inhumane behavior is categorically condemned by our union, which also demands the full payment of all member arrears of EAA and withheld paychecks. The ill-fated Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) has detrimental aspects. It is now part of our history that our Union categorically rejected the IPPIS, calling it a monster and a bad wind that would harm the Nigerian university system. Our position and intuition had since been confirmed.
“We continue to insist that IPPIS is a cesspit of centralised corruption by government officials pushed and foisted on the Nigerian state by Breton Woods organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank. Even with the government’s announcement that universities will leave IPPIS, the willful failure of corrupt government and ministry officials to transfer the University Payroll System away from IPPIS is sad and condemnable.”
The press conference was attended by the seven branch chairmen: Prof. Kayode Adebayo (University of Lagos), Dr. Isaac Oyewunmi (Lagos State University, Ojo), Dr. Akolade Lapite (Lagos State University of Education), Dr. Tayo Okulaja (Lagos State University of Technology), Dr. Gbenga Akinleye (Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Dr. Wale Ositoye (Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun), and Dr. Wasiu Olooto (OU).
