By Adedapo Adesanya
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has decided to hold on till February before embarking on a nationwide industrial action.
This follows intervention from the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) which plans to avert the strike action as the federal government was yet to fully fulfil its agreement with the academic pressure group.
The 50-member NIREC, under the co-chairmanship of the Sultan of Sokoto, Mr Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III; and the Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Mr Samson Olasupo Ayokunle, is also backed by the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Bishop Mathew Kukah, among other Christian and Muslim leaders.
ASUU had resolved to embark on industrial action to compel the federal government to meet its demands since last year, threatening strike action among government-owned universities.
However, following the intervention of NIREC, ASUU has opted to go for more consultations and to give the government a few days within January 2022 to address all outstanding issues arising from the December 2020 Memorandum of Action (MoA).
In an interview with THISDAY Newspaper over the weekend, ASUU President, Mr Emmanuel Osodake, said that the union had agreed to wait till February.
He also added that it has also submitted its position to NIREC which promised to help mediate and resolve the issues.
“ASUU leadership has agreed to wait till February to give NIREC and other stakeholders enough room to address the union’s grievances,” he said.
The decision of ASUU to suspend action till February is seen as bowing to pressure from prominent Nigerians and the leadership of NIREC comprising of the Sultan of Sokoto, the president of the CAN and other stakeholders.
Mr Osodeke noted that ASUU would resist any attempt to blackmail it and derail its patriotic struggle for a productive university system “by official propaganda founded on tokenism and crumb-sharing”.
Its earlier statement had summed up the decisions reached at the emergency National Executive Council (NEC) of the union held at its National Secretariat, University of Abuja.
The meeting was meant to review the level of government’s implementation of the FGN-ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) of December 23, 2020, and other related matters to decide on the way forward.
In deciding to stay action on strike, Mr Osodake said: “NEC took full account of efforts by student union bodies, leading media organisations, traditional rulers, civil society organisations and other interest groups within and outside Nigeria to make government address all outstanding issues arising from the December 2020 MoA”.
In particular, the ASUU president said the union took special cognisance of the pledges made by the NIREC to make further consultations on the crisis in the coming days to find an amicable resolution.
He accused the government of reneging on its promise to set up an inter-ministerial committee to handle renegotiation of the 2009 agreement.
One of the issues in contention is the delay in approving the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) developed by ASUU.
ASUU said it was fully prepared to address all the reports of the “integrity test” on UTAS raised by the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to pave way for its deployment.
