The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has extended its strike by another four weeks to give the Federal Government more time to meet its demands.
The union took the decision at the end of its National Executive Council meeting at its national secretariat in Abuja on Sunday.
Quoting a statement by its President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, The Nation reports that the union said: “Following extensive deliberations and taking cognisance of Government’s past failures to abide by its own timelines in addressing issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MOA), NEC resolved that the strike be rolled over for four weeks to give Government more time to satisfactorily resolve all the outstanding issues.
“The role-over strike action is with effect from 12.01a.m. on Monday, 1st August, 2022.”
ASUU had called out its members on a one-month strike on February 14, 2022 over the non-implementation of the Memorandum of Action (MoA) it signed with the Federal Government and the insistence of the government on the adoption of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system (IPPIS) as payment platform for all federal workers.
The union proposed UTAS as an alternative platform for the payment of salaries for its members following discrepancies highlighted in the use of IPPIS.
It declared a two-month strike on March 14.
The teachers are on the three-month strike declared by ASUU after the expiration of the two-month warning strike.
The strike entered its 168 day on Monday, August 1, 2022.
Earlier in a story titled “Strike: We’ve not heard from education minister – ASUU,” The Punch had reported that the union’s National Executive failed to suspend the ongoing strike action, which has led to a shutdown of academic activities in public universities across the country.
The NEC was scheduled to meet on Monday August 1, 2022.
According to the report, sources within the NEC confirmed that the meeting, which ended in the early hours of Monday morning (August 1, 2022), sought to review the activities and progress recorded so far.
It was also learned that the union was yet to hear from the minister of education, Adamu Adamu, despite the promises made to President Muhammadu Buhari that the strike would be resolved.
“We reviewed the progress made so far, and to be honest, no progress was made. We have not heard from the minister at all. Nobody has reached out to us. I can confirm that calling off the strike is not even a matter of discussion,” a source within the NEC who did not want to be named noted this to our correspondent on Monday morning.
But the spokesperson of the ministry of education, Ben Goong, explained that the minister of education, Adamu Adamu, was working round the clock to ensure that the strike is called off.
“We can not speak on what we are doing before we make our submissions to the president. The minister is working round the clock to ensure that he carries out the directive of the president. When we get to the point of calling ASUU, we will,” Goong said.
ASUU had vowed not to suspend its strike if all its demands remained unmet.
