ASUU votes to embark on 4-week warning strike

Barely four days after threatening to embark on an indefinite action over failure of the Federal Government to implement the famous February 7, 2019 Memorandum of Action a part of the 2009 agreement, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has made do its threat, as it has commenced on a four week strike, across all public institutions in the country.

This is as the National Executive Council (NEC) of ASUU has now voted to go on a one-month warning strike to press its demands on the government, following lengthy debates that lasted into the early hours of Monday.

The strike, according to a source at the conference in Lagos, is to give the Federal Government time to accomplish what it has to do, failing which the union will proceed on an indefinite strike.

“We just want to give the government a long rope hoping that it would see the need to avoid a total paralysis of academic activities in the nation’s universities. We are parents too and have our children in the system but we cannot watch and allow the total collapse of education in the country.

“Our agitation is in the interest of all and if the system is made better, we will all enjoy it. Prominent personalities in the country have waded into the matter but the government seems recalcitrant. Our National President would explain more when he briefs the press later today,” he said.

It would be recalled that Coordinator, Abuja Zone of the union, Dr Salahu Lawal, had said at a press conference in Gwagwalada, last Wednesday, that the union was already set to embark on a strike action in order to press home its demands.

ASUU had earlier embarked on strike over the alleged failure of the Federal Government to address all the agreements reached in the 2009 agreement it entered with it.

Lawal said the union was not going into the signing of new agreements, nor enter into new negotiation, new memorandum of understanding/memorandum of action.

“The FG has refused to implement the noble proposals contained in that historic document. Here we are in 2022, more than one year since the suspension of the nine-month strike; we’re still waiting on the FGN to do the needful.

“It is needless to say that our members are sick and tired of the paying of lip service to the education sector.

“Consequent upon the foregoing, our great Union has in the past one month undertaken a comprehensive review of the FGN’s handling of our welfare (where a Professor takes a gross salary of 416,000 naira only).

“As a follow up, ASUU has commenced a one week campus-by-campus mobilisation, sensitization and conscientization of its members nationwide on the State of the Union with regard to our cardinal demands and next line of action.

“Barring any last-ditch positive response from the FGN, therefore, we are well prepared to declaring a total, comprehensive and indefinite strike soonest,” he said.

Lawal further said that the impending strike would be “beyond any watered-down release of funding for the revitalization of public universities and beyond any devalued and staggered payment of earned academic allowances.”

“We are not going into the signing of new agreement; neither new negotiation nor new memorandum of understanding/memorandum of action.

“We are at the point of reasonable action on the part of the government.

“We insist on the immediate and full implementation of our demands as contained in the December, 2020 MOA.

“And also insist on the immediate signing into law and implementation of the Renegotiated 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement as submitted by the Munzali Jibril Committee in May 2021,” he said.