The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said that the Federal Government is not sincere about addressing the issues affecting university education in the country.

ASUU embarked on a nationwide strike on February 14 over the adoption of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) of the government as the payment system in the university sector.

The union also decried the poor funding of universities, non-payment of salaries and allowances of some of their colleagues, as well as the inability of the government to pay earned academic allowance to lecturers, among other issues.

Speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s programme, Politics Today, on Monday, the ASUU President, Emmanuel Osodeke, accused the Federal Government of being insincere about resolving the lingering strike.

Osodeke, however, said the ASUU leadership would meet with the government on Tuesday (today) in Abuja, adding that the striking university lecturers were ready to return to the classrooms once their demands are met.

He said: “The government is not sincere in its dealing with us. This has been the issue all along.

“What we are doing is the sacrifice we have to save this country and its youths. A collapsed university system is a collapsed country and we are almost there.  We will not be tired, we will ensure that our university system works.

“We have not heard any serious communication from the government though they have invited us for renegotiation of the 2009 agreement tomorrow (today).

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“The issues have to do with funding, structure, autonomy, and how to raise funds for the university system in Nigeria. But the government has reduced the issue to just salary alone.

“If the government has looked at the issues comprehensively, we will not be talking about funding. This government wants to blackmail us with salaries.

“Every university in the world is an autonomous body. You don’t subject the university to public service. This is why we are where we are today.”

Osodeke added: “Each time a new committee is set up, the first question we ask them is whether they have the mandate to renegotiate the whole agreement with us and they usually answer in the affirmative.

“Imagine since May 2021, we concluded renegotiation and they said they would get back to us. Since then, they didn’t back to us since we started this strike.”

The ASUU President further described as “sad”, the claim by the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, that the Federal Government does not have the money to meet ASUU’s demands.

“It is sad for the Federal Government to say it does not have money to meet our demand.  If anybody has a will, he or she can get what he wants.

“If the government has the will and believes that education is important, it will raise any amount to fix it.

“This is a government that has given N100 billion for Trader Moni, raised about N200 billion to feed school children?  Each of these is more than what we are asking for as revitalisation fund,” Osodeke said.

He added that ASUU would called off its strike “if the government signs to the agreements of previous discussions”.

The Star