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Tag: Ayo Akinwole

  • Strike: FG must give public universities what is needed – ASUU

    Strike: FG must give public universities what is needed – ASUU

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says its members remained resolute to get what public universities need from the Federal Government to survive and compete globally.

    Prof. Ayo Akinwole, the Chairman of ASUU, University of Ibadan chapter, made the assertions on Monday in Ibadan.

    Akinwole said that lecturers in public universities in Nigeria have been using their bloods to run public universities and sustaining it.

    “Lecturers retain Nigerian public universities with their blood, but is it right for Nigerians to say they should die on the job? I am saying they are owing us over eight years verified earned academic allowances.

    “Is it only ASUU that is on strike? Some sectors (research institutes) of the nation have been on strike for 13 months and the government has been paying their salaries.

    “Is it an offence to become lecturers in Nigerian universities? What led to the strike? It is the non-responsiveness of the government that led to the strike,” he said.

    According to him, the union will not sacrifice its members’ welfare. It will resist any effort to turn intellectuals to slaves.

    He said that the union had given 14-month strike notice to the Federal Government before commencing the strike in 2022.

    Akinwole said, even the effort of the Nigerian Inter-religious council in 2021 yielded no results before the union was forced to declare the strike on Feb. 14.

    “We waited for 14 months from December 2020 to February 2022 before declaring this strike.

    “I am saying 14 months’ notice, 14 months engagements and Nigeria Inter-religious council intervened in 2021 when we would have declared the strike.

    “We gave them one month with no result. Heroes are gone before they are appreciated, but our union will not die. We will not die. We are going to be alive to see this struggle through,” he said.

    Akinwole said that the N1.1 trillion for revitalisation of universities was not for lecturers in the public universities.

    He explained that the amount was arrived at by the Federal Government through its NEEDS Assessment report on the level of decay in Nigerian public universities.

    Akinwole, however, thanked ASUU members for sacrificing and remaining resolute to reposition the nation’s public university education.

    He said that only strikes have forced the government to spend money on its universities in the last 25 years.

    “If ASUU does not go on this struggle, there will be no university for new people to attend.

    “In the last 25 years, the Federal Government would not have spent money on its universities, if ASUU had not gone on strike.

    “I am also a parent and my children are at home with me. Most lecturers have to spend their money on their students’ projects for some students to graduate.

    “I could give you numbers of some of my students who can tell you how much I have had to support their projects,” the chairman said.

  • What FG should do to avert strike – ASUU

    What FG should do to avert strike – ASUU

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has advised the federal government of Nigeria on what to do to avert the looming industrial strike action.

    Prof Ayo Akinwole, Chairman of ASUU, University of Ibadan chapter gave the advice while speaking in Ibadan on Tuesday in an interactive session with newsmen.

    He called on Nigerians to prevail on the FG to prevent imminent strike by fulfilling its promises.

    Akinwole, who was joined by other ASUU leadership of the institution, said that government was yet to implement the 2009 agreement which encompassed its members’ conditions of service, emoluments and allowances.

    “What has been subsisting in the universities since 2009 still remains the same. So, we have agreed, we’ve concluded negotiations with the government’s team in attendance in May, but yet to sign it into Law.

    “Rather than submitting it for presidential ascent, what the government wants to do now is to set up another tripartite committee to look again into what took us four years to arrive at.

    “This is unacceptable to our union and we are telling the public that government is playing with time bomb in respect to higher education and universities in general,” Akinwole said.

    He noted that the intervention of the National Inter Religious Council prevented the industrial action that could have been in December 2021 and promised to discuss with government and mediate.

    Akinwole said that another issue in contention was the registration of UTAS, the software that ASUU developed for management of personnel, salaries and wages in the university system which government said would be evaluated by NITDA and deployed in six months.

    “Government is asking us after a year of submission to resubmit the software for another re-evaluation. In spite of the fact that the average evaluation scored the software very high, the government is not willing to deploy UTAS.

    “We are calling on Nigerians to prevail on them to do the needful in order not to throw the university system into another crisis which they may not be able to manage.

    “Another issue is the revitalization of the university system. The government by his own team submitted that it will take N1.3 trillion to revitalise the Nigerian education system to meet up with the West African average way back 2013.

    “Up till today, government had released just N270 million which leaves a surplus of over one point something trillions yet unreleased. Government promised that N220 million would be released before the end of last year.

    “But N30 million was released in addition to N20 million released in 2019 that makes N50 million that government ought to release in 2014. With the additional outstanding N850 million it ought to release for the next four years,”he said.

    Akinwole said there was no need for another crisis if government had fulfilled its promises, noting that, “the congress of ASUU UI calls on the Federal Government to fulfil the MoA signed in December 2020.”