‘We are ready to suspend strike,’ ASUU tells FG

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Wednesday declared its readiness to end the nine-month industrial action and return to the classroom.

The Ibadan Zonal Coordinator of ASUU, Prof. Ade Adejumo, who disclosed this at a press briefing in Ibadan, however, said the Federal Government’s plan to use hunger as a weapon to weaken the union’s agitation and demands would not work.

He stressed that the varsity lecturers cannot work on an empty stomach.

Represented at the forum by the Chairperson of ASUU at the University of Ilorin, Prof. Moyo Ajao, the coordinator urged well-meaning Nigerians to compel the government to release the withheld salaries of ASUU members, remit the union’s check-off dues to the rightful owner and speed up the process of testing the integrity of Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) to ensure its deployment for payment of salaries and allowances from January next year.

Adejumo, who described the ongoing disagreement on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) as a distraction to the union’s demands, said it was strange that the government would lump the payment of lecturers together with that of civil servants.

He said: “The government against international labour laws opted to use hunger as a weapon against us. Our members have been battered by the suspension of our salaries for several months but rather than capitulate and throw our universities to the dogs to suit the interest of the politicians, we have decided to weather the storm until the needful is done.

“Just as our able president, Comrade Biodun Ogunyemi, said recently, the issue of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) is a distraction to the union. Apart from IPPIS being a cesspool of corruption as many Nigerians who are at its receiving end have attested to, there is no serious-minded country in the world where university lecturers and intellectual assets of the country are lumped together in payment with the civil service.

“Nigerians and the international community should be aware that despite the ongoing negotiations, the government has refused to pay our salaries and allowances. It has also callously withheld the check-off dues of some of our members, who were selectively paid amputated salaries, in order to starve the union of the energy needed to sustain the negotiations.

“The government appears to be keen about making lecturers commit suicide, as some have been doing, due to economic hardship, though no society progresses beyond its education. It is a rough road but we continue to trudge on because when the going gets tough, only the tough get going.

“We can only appeal to our members to continue to persevere the same way we persevered during the inglorious days of military misrule.

“At this stage of the struggle, Nigerians are urged to compel the government to release the withheld salaries of our members, remit the check-off dues of the union to the rightful owner, pay us the same way it had paid our arbitrarily handpicked members without subjecting them to IPPIS registration and speed up the process of testing the integrity of UTAS so that it may be deployed for payment beginning from January 2021.

“We are ready to suspend the strike as our children too are tired of staying at home. But we cannot work on empty stomachs while politicians’ homes and warehouses are filled with palliative materials that they don’t even need.”