Emmanuel Osodeke, who is the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), submitted on Monday that the union has reached an agreement with the Federal Government to adopt the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) as payment platform for university lecturers.
Team@orientactualmags.com learned Osodeke , who said this during an interview with Channels Television , added that the federal government had also invited ASUU leaders for a meeting today to discuss the issue of renegotiation in order to end the ongoing strike action.
ASUU will according to him suspend the strike if the federal government agrees to its demands during the said meeting.
‘We have not had any serious communication though they have invited us for a meeting on one issue, tomorrow (referring to Tuesday), which is the issue of renegotiation.
You know that there are seven issues why we are on strike. They are inviting us for discussion on the issue of renegotiation, tomorrow, which is renegotiation of the 2009 agreement.
The issues of IPPIS and UTAS has been put to rest because the test has been done and it has been agreed with the chief of staff, UTAS will be implemented to cover the university.
Two, if this government had shown seriousness, this strike would not have lasted more than two weeks. If you recall we were supposed to go on strike in November, we didn’t start it because NIREC intervened. We conceded to them.
They met with the president, he set up a committee headed by the chief of staff that should resolve this quickly, the world saw it in the press, they did nothing. The president set up the Munzali committee, we met with them , nothing, they didn’t come back.
They set up the Nimi Briggs committee, it’s been more than three months, two months we finished negotiating with them, they didn’t come back. The president directed the Ministry of Education to finish within two weeks, two weeks has passed, they didn’t come back.
If we go into that meeting tomorrow and the government says what we have negotiated, we are willing to sign, the strike will be called off’ he said.
It will be recalled that ASUU had on February 14, 2022, embarked on a 4-week strike to press home their unresolved demands , the strike began exactly 183 days ago-Team@orientactualmags.com
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