FG not ready to end strike – ASUU

After 10 unsuccessful meetings with the
Federal Government, the Academic Staff Union of
Universities, ASUU, yesterday said government
was not ready to end the 8-week-old strike,
lamenting that government displayed dishonesty
and lack of integrity during negotiations.
At a briefing in Lagos, ASUU's President, Dr. Isa
Faggae, claimed that government had declared it
would not implement the agreed injection of
funds to revitalise the public universities, but was
only making a dubious statement of supporting
some universities with N100 billion.
He said: "Government had also declared that it
will not pay university academics their earned
allowances which accumulated from 2009 to 2013.
Rather, it is talking about providing N30 billion to
assist various Governing Councils of Federal
Universities to defray the arrears of N92 billion
owed to all categories of staff in the university
system."
Narrating the union's experience at the last
meeting with the Government held on Monday,
Faggae said: ASUU was shocked by the level of
deceit, dishonesty, and lack of integrity displayed
by the Government. Never in the history of ASUU-
Government relations have we, as a union, ever
experienced the kind of volte-face exhibited by
Government. At one stage in the interaction, the
Secretary to the Government Federation ridiculed
the agreement, the MoU and the Needs
Assessment Report, mocking the Minister of
Education to "go and give them N400 billion," at
which members of the government scornfully
laughed."
He argued that the Governor Gabriel Suswam-led
Implementation Committee was being used as
smokescreen to "deceive ASUU, Nigerian students
and their parents, as well as other unsuspecting
members of the public on the purportedly
released N100 billion for the implementation of
the Needs Assessment Report.
First, he said, government plans to divert the
regular yearly allocations to universities by
Tertiary Education Trust, TETFund, to make at
least 70% of the N100 billion. This is unacceptable
to ASUU. It is like robbing Peter to pay Paul, since
the idea of revitalization took full cognizance of
the intervention role TETFund ab-initio.
"Again, contrary to subsisting operational
procedures, about 75% of the money meant for
revitalizing universities would not be released to
them as the Suswam Committee plans to hand
over construction of the hostel projects to the
Federal Ministry of Education and/or the National
Universities Commission, for implementation.
This is illegal; neither the ministry nor NUC is
backed by laws of Nigerian Public Universities to
divert monies meant for the development of these
institutions into centrally executed projects."
Dr. Faggae questioned the committee's motives
for proposing to commit N1.6 million to a bed
space, instead of N200, 000 to N400, 000, saying,
"We see a continuation of outrageous contract
regimes in the plan to centrally coordinate the
construction of student hostels as done in the
case of the 12 newly established Federal
Universities with TETFund resources. The NUC has
transmuted itself into a "Tenders' board" which
awarded contracts for the construction of 560 bed
spaces hostel for each university at a whooping
sum of 1.2 bn. This contract sum translates into
N2.143 million per bed space.