•••SAYS FG HAS DONE ITS BEST
The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Mr Festus Keyamo, (SAN), has called on parents of public university students to prevail on the Academic Staff Union of universities to call off the six month old industrial action in the country.
Keyamo said that the Federal Government has done its best to bring to an end the lingering industrial action which has led to the shutting down of all states universities.
Keyamo made the call while speaking on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Friday which was monitored by the Network.
ASUU had declared a warning strike on February 14, 2022 and suspended academic activities in public universities.
The union extended the warning strike by two months in March 14, 2022 to call Government’s attention to its demands.
The lecturers’ body has been engaging the FG on issues such as Earned Academic Allowances, promotion arrears, the sudden introduction of Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system, and observed inconsistencies emanating from its implementation, renegotiation of 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement, the funding for revitalisation of public universities among others.
ASUU wants the IPPIS to be replaced with its own University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS).
Keyamo said that it was inconceivable for the Federal Government to be ‘blackmailed’ to pay ASUU N1.2 trillion when the total revenue of the country is N6.1 trillion.
“Even before the strike began we called them to a meeting. It’s not like we left them to go on strike and we were sleeping and three months later we said ‘Can we start talking?’”
“The moment they declared (strike) we called them and said ‘Let us start talking’…You cannot allow a sector to hold you by the jugular and then blackmail you to go and borrow ₦1.2 trillion for overhead when our total income will be about ₦6.1 trillion,” he said.
“I will tell the parents and everybody ‘Go and beg ASUU’. Like the President said the other time ‘Those who know them should appeal to their sense of patriotism,’” Keyamo said.