The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has cried out over non-payment of salaries to members by the government, advising lecturers to immediately seek alternative means of survival.
\nThis was as it vowed to press home its demands until government bows, asking students and parents not to expect any possible resumption of universities soon.
\nThe Abuja zone of the union at a press conference, yesterday morning at the University of Abuja campus, accused the government of not showing commitment in resolving the issues that necessitated the ongoing industrial action.
\nThe union\u2019s Abuja Zonal Coordinator, Prof. Theophilus Lagi, who read the text of the press conference, yesterday, insisted that members were \u201crelentlessly determined to continue with the ongoing strike until our demands are met.
\n\u201cToday, we wish to let Nigerians, especially our students and parents know that there is no hope in sight to ending or suspending the ASUU strike that has lingered for several months as government is yet to show serious commitment towards addressing our core demands.
\n\u201cOur members have been advised to seek other legitimate means of survival as the government has not released salaries withheld since February, 2020,\u201d the text read.
\nThe union particularly accused the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, of showing what it called \u201cdisdain for Nigerian academics.\u201d
\nIt would be recalled that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Abuja zone comprising the Federal University of Technology, Minna; Nasarawa State University, Keffi; Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai; Federal University of Lafia; and the University of Abuja; addressed a press conference on November 2, 2020, where it expressed dissatisfaction with the Federal Government\u2019s handling of the negotiation to resolve the face-off occasioned by the government\u2019s failure to implement the MoA of 2019, and the renegotiation of the 2009, agreement.
\nMeanwhile, the Federal Government has said that for the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), to be used as an alternative platform to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), there must be hardware backing the system.
\nThe Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), had opposed the introduction of IPPIS as the payment platform, claiming that it did not take care of their peculiarities and had come up with UTAS.
\nBut the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, said that even if the UTAS passed the integrity test, it required the hardware to protect it against hacking and other challenges that could affect its efficiency.
\nSpeaking to State House correspondents after meeting behind closed doors with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, the senator said even if the government accepted the payment mode for lecturers who had rejected being placed on IPPIS, ASUU has no money to procure the necessary hardware for its implementation.
\nThe minister said that the Federal Government did not make any budgetary provision for the procurement of the UTAS hardware and wondered if the union has the required finances for such a project.
\nNgige, however, said the government has already forwarded the UTAS software to the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) for integrity test, saying that government would not want to discourage any Nigerian from providing home-grown solutions to issues.
\nAsked if the government had shifted grounds on its negotiations with ASUU, the minister stated: \u201cNo, the UTAS, which is the University Transparent System, which they brought is not yet ready. It is undergoing an integrity test for the software. I am not a computer scientist, but you must also know that you must test the hardware in the integrity test for the software.
\n\u201cAs we speak, ASUU has no hardware and UTAS does not have hardware backing.
\n\u201cI am waiting for the NITDA full report but the preliminary report they gave me, the software integrity test will take them about six to eight weeks and thereafter, we go to the hardware. But the big issue is who will provide the hardware?
\n\u201cASUU doesn\u2019t have the finances to do so. Has the government budgeted for it now as we speak? So, that one is a major problem. But we don\u2019t have to dissuade anybody, we don\u2019t have to tell anybody not to carry on, we like local content development, we need our things to be home-grown. So, we are really encouraging them.
\n\u201cBy the time we finish with this other software test to look at its capacity, its ability to withstand shock and hacking, etc, the hardware test is in, hacking and security. So, by the time we finish it, we will decide on what to do.\u201d
\nHe also faulted the claim by ASUU that the government had not fulfilled any of the promises made to the union, adding that out of the nine-point demand of the university teachers, six had been attended to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has cried out over non-payment of salaries to members by the government, advising lecturers to immediately seek alternative means of survival. This was as it vowed to press home its demands until government bows, asking students and parents not to expect any possible resumption of universities soon. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-246888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=246888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/195236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=246888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=246888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=246888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}