University lecturers, under the auspices of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Wednesday began a weeklong warning strike to protest alleged non implemention of agreements it reached with the federal government since 2009. Before now, the union had issued several threats of “total, comprehensive and indefinite” nationwide strikes to show its displeasure with the government for not honouring the memoranda of understanding arrived at in the past. In 2020, ASUU went on a nine-month strike, which was called off in December of that year. In 2021, the union issued fresh threats and gave the government a three-week ultimatum to address its grievances. It later withdrew the threat only the government paid N22.1bn in earned allowances and N30bn revitalisation fund to the universities.
The new strike warning the union has given is over the funds outstanding. However, Dr. Chris Ngige, minister of labour, reacting to ASUU’s new threat Wednesday, said the government had been implementing the 2020 MoA “religiously”. He said, “When they called off their strike in December 2020, the release of funds was one of the agreements. They were paid N40 billion and another N30 billion for revitalisation of public universities during the first quarter of 2021, bringing the total to N70 billion.
“If they say the EAA is not in the 2022 Budget, why don’t they allow the government to do a supplementary budget? There is a parameter that we use to calculate it. That parameter changes every year and it is the budget office that is calculating it. Maybe by March the Budget Office would have known what the parameter will be and put it in the 2022 supplementary budget. The EAA they got in 2021 was in the supplementary budget. We are implementing the MoA; we have been implementing it religiously. When they (ASUU) are talking like that, I don’t like it because they are talking just to whip up sentiments.”
The minister also directed the ASUU leadership to its primary employer – Federal Ministry of Education (FMoE) -to find out the progress of the re-negotiation of the 2009 FG-ASUU agreement. He said the report of the Prof Munzali Jibril Committee was not forwarded to him or the Presidential Committee on Salaries for input. “They are supposed to write to their minister who is their employer and tell him these things you are saying. When there is a breakdown in discussion that is when it comes to the federal ministry of Labour,” he said. They (FMoE) have not sent us any report either at the Presidential Committee on Salaries (PCS) or have they sent anything to me as minister of Labour.” Asked if there is any meeting planned with ASUU leadership, Ngige said, “It is up to the Federal Ministry of Education to call me. Then I will call a meeting.”
We regret that things have come to this sorry state, necessitating another ASUU threat to disrupt academic activity in all public universities. This would have happened though from what Ngige said. The channel of communication is too constricted for the two parties to make their respective positions clearly understood. For instance, the union did not know and didn’t try to find out why the balance of EAA is not in 2022 federal budget. It didn’t know either that it was to talk to the education ministry first before going public.
We see here a small fire that is being turned into a wildfire, all because the two parties do not understand each other. Let them open wide the channel of communication. They will find out that they can talk better that way.
