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Tag: Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke

  • ASUU laments over brain drain from Universities due to unending strike

    ASUU laments over brain drain from Universities due to unending strike

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities has cried out over exodus of lecturers from the nation’s universities for greener pastures abroad due to the lingering industrial action it embarked on since last February.

    The union attributed the development to the Federal Government’s poor treatment of its members which it said had forced many to venture into other sources of livelihood.

    The National President, ASUU, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, who made this disclosure at the weekend lamented that many lecturers had taken to farming and other economic activities, while a large number had left the country.

    Osodeke spoke in reaction to the government’s refusal to meet some of their demands, including the payment of seven months’ backlog of salaries accrued during the strike.

    It could be recalled that the union had embarked on four strikes totalling 578 days under the Muhammadu Buhari regime. The current strike by ASUU started on February 14, 2022, and entered its day 188 on Monday (today).

  • ASUU STRIKE: “We are making sacrifices for the coming generation to have access to quality education”- Prof Osodeke

    ASUU STRIKE: “We are making sacrifices for the coming generation to have access to quality education”- Prof Osodeke

    As lecturers and students in Nigerian Universities continue to stay at home, the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, has said the union would not relent in making sacrifices for the coming generation to have basic amenities in school and access to quality education.

     

    He stressed that the current strike by the members of the union will linger on till Federal Government is ready to accede to their terms.

     

    Osodeke spoke at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State during ASUU congress within the campus.

     

    In his words: “For anything to develop some people will make sacrifices, you will agree with me that Nigerian universities are on the verge of collapsing. This struggle is not just for them but the future generations.”

     

    He pointed out students are moving out of the country in large number because of the on-ongoing strike.

     

    According to him: “Large number of lecturers have moved out not because they hate this country but because of the way they are being treated. There’s no country in the world that their academics will go on strike and you think the best weapon to use is to seize their salary.

     

    “When we were on the strike lecturers in UK went on strike it didn’t take two day for them to resolve it, Ghanaian lecturers went on strike and they resolved it but here they felt nonchalant and you know why?because they have no commitments, their children are not here. We will go as far as we can on this strike to the point they are ready to agree to our demands.”

     

    TheNewsGuru.com reports that between 1999 and the end of 2021, ASUU went on strike for 60 months and seven days.

     

    As for 2022, it’s more than five months and still counting, unfortunately.

     

    ASUU affiliates namely Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU), Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), and National Association of Academic Technologies (NAAT) have also joined the strike; thereby turning Nigeria’s public universities into ghost towns.

     

    The belated N2 million monthly salary and other allowances recommended for professors by the renegotiating committee led by Prof Nimi Briggs do not seem to impress ASUU and its affiliates.

     

    It would be recalled that When ASUU Chairman of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Dr Gbolahan Bolarin, announced that the National Executive Council of ASUU would be meeting on August 1, 2022, he gave no assurances that the strike would be called off.

     

    ASUU Strike history 

    The earliest that anyone can remember of Nigerian university lecturers going on strike was in the early 1970s when military Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, ordered the dons to vacate their official residences if they wouldn’t go back to work.

     

    The beef between the Federal Government and ASUU has been a seesaw of sorts, with series of Memoranda of Agreement and Understanding usually ending up being observed in the breach.

     

    A Memorandum of Agreement was signed so that between 2009 and 2011 each federal university would get N1.5trn annually, while state-owned universities will receive N3.6m annually per student.

     

    A Memorandum of Understanding agreed in 2013 dwelled on pretty much the same issues of condition of service, funding, university autonomy, academic freedom and administrative matters.

     

    The details were a separate salary structure, called Consolidation University Academic Salary Structure II, a reiteration of the N1.5trn payable to federal universities and the N3.6m payable to state universities for each student they admit.

     

    Others are autonomy of universities academic freedom and stringent criteria for would-be members of university councils, to include having a regular, and not an honorary, university degree, proven integrity, and being knowledgeable and familiar with affairs and traditions of the university system.

     

    The other agreed issues were an Implementation Monitoring Committee for the Agreement to enable the government to meet its obligations to ensure swift amendment to relevant enabling laws and the release of the funds.

     

    The Memorandum of Understanding of 2017 was on the funding of government universities, payment of Earned Academic Allowances of lecturers, government accepting responsibility for staff schools, payment of the pension of professors and salary shortfalls.

     

    The 2019 Memorandum of Agreement was on the full implementation of the 2013 Agreement, payment of salary shortfalls of the University of Agriculture, Makurdi, part-payment of arrears of EAA up to 2018, and mainstreaming of EAA into annual budgets, beginning from 2019.

     

    Other agreements were the strengthening of the Consultative Committee on state-owned universities, government approval for Nigeria Universities Pension Management Company, appointment of visitation committees to universities, documentation of guidelines on procedures and roles of partners in the process of renegotiating FGN-ASUU Agreement of 2009.

     

    The Federal Government, which serially fails to fulfil its part of the agreements soon after ASUU agrees to return to the classroom, appears to lack the wherewithal to consummate the agreements, or is just playing games with the union.

     

    One sore area of disagreement is the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System introduced by the Federal Government to pay the salaries of all government officials, and the alternative University Transparency and Accountability Solution offered by ASUU.

     

    IPPIS enrolls government workers for the payment of salaries from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation. Its justification is that it ensures high integrity and can prevent the enlistment of ghost workers.

     

    UTAS is ASUU’s argument that university lecturers’ jobs are peculiar and unlike other government employment. It captures employment, retirement, sabbatical leave, adjunct and part-time engagements and other issues unique to the university system.

     

    But the Federal Government, through the Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency, Kashifu Inuwa, claimed that UTAS failed its integrity test and could not be adopted to pay salaries.

     

    However, ASUU President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, countered that because NITDA confirmed that UTAS at least scored 85 per cent on the User Acceptance Test conducted by NITDA, it has, therefore, passed the integrity test.

     

    But if the Federal Government would like to invoke that law, it must be sure that it could not be held culpable for causing the strike. It’s a case of he who must come to equity must come with clean hands.

     

    ASUU’s grouse is that the Federal Government serially reneges on agreements it freely entered into to increase funding to the universities whose student population keeps ballooning as Nigeria’s population increases.

     

    The government needs to come clean and tell the dons what it can, or cannot, do, and get ASUU and other educational unions on a 10-year moratorium promising that there will be no strikes, while the government declares a Marshall Plan to rehabilitate the tertiary educational system.

     

    The state governments should negotiate with the unions and not be compelled to adopt agreements that they did not participate in making. Kudos to the Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, for engaging stakeholders on the participation of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology’s Chapter of ASUU in the ongoing strike.

  • ASUU to query universities not in compliance with ongoing strike

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU) has threatened to query universities that have failed to comply with its decision to remain on strike while negotiations with the Federal Government continue.

    ASUU President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, said this in an interview with newsmen on Monday in Abuja.

    Thenewsguru.com recall that ASUU had been on strike for the past five months to press home its demands.

    The striking lecturers’ demands include, funding for the revitalisation of public universities, Earned Academic Allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) and promotion arrears.

    Others are the renegotiation of 2009 ASUU-FG Agreement and the inconsistency in Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).

    Newsmen, however, reports that since the union embarked on strike, few of its members have pulled out of the ongoing strike to resume their academic activities.

    According to Osedeke, we will punish those who have pulled out from our ongoing strike the appropriate way.

    “We will ensure to query them and we will follow it up the appropriate way. We have even queried some of them in accordance with the union,’’ he said.

    Osedeke also noted that since the last Tripartite Plus meeting called by the Chief of Staff to the President on the ongoing industrial action over a month ago, there has been no other meeting.

    He said that there was nothing concrete that came out of the last meeting that was held at the villa.

    “We have not been called for any other meeting since that time and government did not offer us anything, they just ask us to meeting with the committee that was all.

    He also said that the union will be meeting with government within the week.

  • We’ll not participate in any further talk with FG – ASUU

    We’ll not participate in any further talk with FG – ASUU

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has said it would not participate in any further talk with the federal government.

     

    ASUU explained that it had since rounded off a negotiation with the government concerning its demands.

    We have nothing to negotiate with the government

     

    It would be recalled that the federal government reconstituted a 7-member committee to renegotiate the 2009 demands of ASUU.

     

    Reacting to the development, the President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, said ASUU was waiting for the government to implement its demands so that lecturers go return to the classroom.

     

    “We don’t know what they (federal government) are talking about, we have nothing to negotiate with the government. As far as we are concerned, we have concluded negotiation with the government,” he said.

     

    Recall that the federal government had earlier announced the reconstitution of a team to renegotiate the 2009 agreement with ASUU.

     

    Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, who reconstituted the renegotiation team in Abuja, explained that the action was to “speedily bring to a conclusion, all outstanding issues in the 2009 agreement to achieve the desired industrial peace on our campuses.”

     

    The chairman and members of the reconstituted 2009 FGN/University-Based Unions Agreements Re-negotiation Team has Prof. Emeritus Nimi Briggs-(Pro-Chancellor, Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike Ikwo), as chairman; Lawrence Patrick Ngbale-(Pro-Chancellor, Federal University, Wukari, as member representing North East and Prof. Funmi Togunu-Bickersteth-(Pro-Chancellor, Federal University, Birnin Kebbi as a member, representing South West.

     

    Other members are Sen. Chris Adighije- (Pro-Chancellor, Federal University. Lokoja as a member, representing southeast; Prof. Olu Obafemi -(Pro-Chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Minna, member, representing North-Central; Prof. Zubairu Iliyasu-(Pro-Chancellor, Kano State University of Science & Technology as a member, representing North West and Barr. Matthew Seiyefa, (Pro-Chancellor, Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island as a member, representing South-South.

     

    The Federal Ministry of Education, in a statement to this effect, through its Director of Press, Bem Goong, said,” The team will be inaugurated by the Minister on Monday, the 7th of March, 2022 at the Minister’s Conference room, headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja by noon.

     

    “All advisers and observers in the Federal Government/University-based Unions 2009 agreements Re-negotiation Team are expected to attend the inauguration,” the statement said.