REVIEW… ASUU STRIKE: Joke on Buhari as presidential directive fails to sway lecturers; students lose 13 months

Nigerian public universities were shut down on February 14, 2022, after lecturers under the aegis of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) downed tools in protest of the inability of the federal government to meet its part of an agreement earlier signed.

The industrial action began as a one month warning strike, over the non-implementation of the Memorandum of Action (MoA) signed between the Federal Government and ASUU in 2009, as well as the insistence of government on the adoption of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) as payment platform for all federal workers, has dragged into the sixth month with both parties unwilling to be the first to blink.

ASUU again extended the strike action by another four weeks on Monday.

While the government negotiation team led in the past by Labour and Employment Minister, Chris Ngige, had on numerous occasions, promised Nigerians that an agreement had been reached, ASUU on its part would not bulge, thereby dragging the strike further which prompted President Muhammadu Buhari to issue a directive to the minister of education, Adamu Adamu to ensure the matter was resolved within two weeks starting July 19, 2022.

The presidency had however tried to explain that the president did not issue an ultimatum, but that at a meeting with the president, it was the Minister of Education, Adamu who requested to take over negotiations with ASUU, promising to achieve results within two to three weeks.

The Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the president, Garba Shehu, said “During the meeting, the Minister of Education requested that the Minister of Labour hands off the negotiation to allow him lead and conclude what he had earlier on started with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

“And he promised that he could get an agreement within the shortest possible time, possibly two to three weeks”.

But as Nigerians awaited the outcome of the new development, which came with a clear mandate to resolve the impasse in two weeks by reaching a truce with the striking union, there seems not to be a common ground between the two warring parties.

Fourteen days after Adamu took over the negotiations, things went downhill, as ASUU announced that it was extending its industrial strike by another four weeks, will would extend to the end of August.

In giving the ultimatum, President Buhari had every reason to worry as under his administration, undergraduates in Nigerian universities had lost a whopping cumulative 13 months of their educational pursuits due to the recurring strike actions embarked upon by different unions in the tertiary education set up. With the latest ASUU extension, it would be 14 months!

During his electioneering campaigns for the 2015 presidential election, Buhari had made the issue of ASUU strikes one of his cardinal points in attacking the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan and vowed to put an end to strikes by university unions and lecturers.

However, barely two years into the life of his administration, the President was jolted by the first ASUU strike under his government when in August 2017, the academics embarked on an indefinite strike after the government faulted on the MOU it had signed with the union.

This was after a one-week warning strike in November 2016 following a request for government to disburse the sum of N1.3trn to the union.

In a bid to pacify ASUU and get them to call off the warning strike, the federal government entered into an agreement to disburse the funds but nine months later, only N200bn of the amount was paid which caused the association to embark on the 2017 strike which lasted for a month and one week.

Read also: Again, Buhari begs ASUU to suspend five-month-old strike

In November 2018, ASUU was to go on another strike which lasted for 95 days, and was temporarily called off in February 2019. The Buhari government had, once again, failed to honour an MoU signed with ASUU in 2013.

In March 2020, ASUU was to embark on yet another indefinite strike which was further compounded by the lockdown imposed by government as a result of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic of that year.

The 2020 ASUU strike was to last for nine months before it was called off on the condition that the government would honour all of its obligations to the striking unions.

On February 14, 2022, following a repeated imbroglio on the use of a payment platform for Federal workers, with the government insisting on the use of IPPIS, ASUU began its current strike which, among other things, is demanding better conditions of service as contained in a 2019 agreement it reached with the Federal Government, which is now in its sixth month.

Among other demands ASUU is insisting on the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) platform for the payment of salaries and allowances, the release of Earned Academic Allowances for lecturers, improved welfare and academic autonomy.

Even with the minister of education’s insistence and takeover of negotiations, shoving aside the minister of Labour and productivity, Chris Ngige, nothing has changed, as ASUU remains adamant, and students remain at home with public tertiary educational system in comatose. With general elections around the corner, there are fears that the politicians may just give priority to what matters the most to them -elections- leaving the nation’s education system in its state of coma, as a presidential directive could not even salvage the situation.

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