ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi branch, has stated that their members have been fully mobilized and are ready to resume their suspended indefinite strike.
ASUU Chairperson, ATBU branch, Dr. Ibrahim Inuwa, stated this while speaking to journalists on Friday during at a press conference held at the union’s secretariat in Bauchi.
Dr. Inuwa said that the national headquarters of their union has directed all branches to observe a lecture-free day in order to hold a congress and mobilize their members as well as sensitize stakeholders and the general public on the planned industrial action and their plight with the government.
He said that, “for the past three congresses, this branch has resolved that the national secretariat should resume the suspended strike action and today, during our congress, members consolidated that stand that anytime the strike is declared, they are fully in support. They directed: ‘Go to the NEC meeting and tell them that ATBU, Bauchi is ready (for the strike).”
Speaking on the lingering issues in which they signed a Memorandum of Action with the federal government in 2009 and which led to the suspension of their strike in December, 2020, the ASUU chairman noted that those issues have not been addressed and he accused the government of dragging its feet on the issues.
“By way of reminder of our demands or what was captured, we have the renegotiation of our 2009 agreement which is to look at the salaries of our members. What was agreed then was that, in every three years, the agreement will be reviewed based on the dollar rate and since 2009 till date, we’ve been on one salary and inflation in the country has taken everything (salary). We feel they are dragging their feet, they don’t want to implement that”.
“Another issue is the revitalization fund, revitalization of universities which is meant to reduce the rot in public universities across the nation. A committee was set up by the government and it went round public universities and their report is captured as NEEDS Assessment. They recommended that the federal government would need to spend about N1.5 trillion to reduce the rot in public universities”.
“Only the administration of Goodluck Jonathan was able to release N200 billion, though we agreed that the money would be released in five phases, every two years. For now, they only release the first tranche of N200 billion during Jonathan. What this government has so far been doing is to just promise us, they will show a sign of commitment and release N50 billion. There was another sign of commitment, they recently released N30 billion and even at that, there are some universities that have not drawn from that money even from our zone,” he said.
He added that: “There’s the issue of forceful enrollment into the IPPIS. We challenged that move and told government that we have an agreement with the then Obasanjo administration that we will develop our own payment platform which is the University Transparency Accountability Solution. What they keep giving us is one excuse or the other from the agency responsible for test-running that software we develop. To us, their excuses or queries they are giving do not make sense”.
“In about 17 criteria they used in assessing UTAS, the least score they had was on two criteria and the score they got was more than 65 percent. All the other 15 criteria scored 70 and above percent. What they are using to pay us, was never subjected to User Acceptance Test. We have realized that they don’t want to deploy our own payment software”.
“We have the issue of proliferation of state universities, and in that agreement, they said the Ministry of Education will raise a bill to the National Assembly, for them to curtail state governments from proliferating state universities. As it is, the National Assembly hasn’t deliberated and come up with any position on that”.
“From what we are getting, some state governments are fighting that bill. It doesn’t make sense for you to float your own university and you cannot own quota in funding it. They are using establishment of state universities as constituency projects.”
“Again, the forceful enrollment of our members into the IPPIS has given us a challenge in getting promotion arrears. Some of our members have been promoted but are yet to get their promotion arrears, some were partially implemented because you’ll find a Professor or Associate Professor who has been promoted for three years only for it to be implemented at the end of the third year at a time he is due for another promotion.
“We have a lot of our members that have not been paid while some have been paid but their salaries have been omitted. In this branch, we have 13 members that have not been paid their salaries for one month, some for six months, some for seven month. We even have a member who hasn’t been paid for 12 months now. In fact, we have a member in the University of Jos that since the implementation of IPPIS, in federal universities, he has not been paid a dime.
“We also have the issue of Academic Earned Allowances. We have a backlog of allowances up to over N80 billion owed our members and they said they will pay some amounts in 2021 what they called ‘May tranche’. The Union told them to halt the accumulation of the arrears and mainstream it so that they don’t continue accumulating it. The government has been deceitful to the public that we demanded for EAA and they settled us whereas, they only paid part of what they mainstreamed which is mostly less than 50 percent.”
Inuwa declared that the federal government was insensitive to the plight of their members even as he accused the federal government as being “deceitful” on the issue of the Earned Academic Allowances of their members, explaining that the government would pay just a part of it but tell the public that they’ve paid them all of it.
He, however, called on the public, religious leaders, parents and well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on the government to honour their agreements which the Union has been agitating for, adding that this will be mainly the subject of discussion during their National Executive Council meeting in the University of Lagos, in which they will decide whether to go on strike or not.
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