Given the outcome of the zonal meetings across the Academic Staff Union of Universities on December 15, ASUU may most probably embark on yet another indefinite strike.
The Academic Staff Union said that 53 lecturers of the University of Ibadan and several others in states universities, including the Ebonyi State Universities, have not been paid salaries for more than a year.
The union stresses that this is the reason it would embark on another strike. While renewing its threat to embark on a long strike, the coordinator, Ibadan Zone, ASUU, Professor Oyebamiji Oyegoke called on Nigerians to intervene “at this critical moment before our members withdraw their services.”
Speaking at an interaction with journalists on the sideline of celebration of Human Rights Day on Friday after the union’s zonal meeting at the University of Ilorin, Oyegoke lamented the harrowing condition that lecturers were being subjected to.
He said the full implementation of terms of the 2020 MoA including funding for revitalisation of public universities; payment of earned academic allowances, withheld salaries and promotion arrears;renegotiation of the 2009 agreement; and inconsistencies in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System and the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, was imperative.
While adding that the baseline of the union is the full implementation of the 2020 MoA freely signed by the Federal Government and the union. Reeling from what Oyegoke said, the failure of the government to meet up with the promises made as attested to in the MoA of 2020 is reason enough to embark on another long strike.