Students in government-owned universities will remain out of school as a meeting between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government, was again deadlocked.
Both parties met on Tuesday but without any agreement on ending the six month old ongoing strike which has complicated the socioeconomic crises facing the nation.
The striking lecturers had met with the Professor Nimi Briggs Committee set up by the government on Tuesday at the National University Commission in Abuja with high hopes of resolving the impasse.
A senior member of ASUU, who craved anonymity told Channels Television that members of the Briggs renegotiation committee did not come with any new offer on the table.
Instead, the ASUU source said, the committee pleaded with the lecturers to suspend the ongoing strike, with promises that their concerns will be included in the 2023 budget.
According to the source, the meeting, which started at about 12 pm, lasted for about three hours without any agreement reached.
ASUU president Emmanuel Osodeke on Monday night said the union had reached an agreement with government to adopt the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) as the payment platform of lecturers and suspend the strike.
“We have not had any serious communication though they have invited us for a meeting on one issue, tomorrow (Tuesday), which is the issue of renegotiation,” Osodeke said on Channels Television programme Politics Today.
“You know that there are seven issues why we are on strike. They are inviting us for discussion on the issue of renegotiation, tomorrow, which is renegotiation of the 2009 agreement.”
ASUU has been on strike since February 14 over government’s failure to implement its demands on salaries and allowances of lecturers, improved funding for universities as well as the adoption of UTAS against the federal government’s preferred payment platform — Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
The strike has shut government-owned universities for 183 days with President Muhammadu Buhari urging ASUU to allow students return to class.
Osodeke, however, stated that the government was not sincere in its negotiations.
He noted that “issues of IPPIS and UTAS have been put to rest because the test has been done and it has been agreed with the chief of staff, UTAS will be implemented to cover the university.
“If this government is serious, this strike will not last more than two weeks. If you recall we were supposed to go on strike in November, we didn’t start it because NIREC came in and intervened. We conceded to them.”
The Guardian
