The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), said it is well prepared to declare a total, comprehensive and indefinite strike soonest.

Rising from its congress meeting held in Abuja, the Abuja zonal coordinator of ASUU, Dr. Salahu Mohammed Lawal, said the Union is not going into any signing of new agreement; neither new negotiation nor new memorandum of understanding/  memorandum of action with the government.

The Union blamed the government for her blatant refusal to implement the famous 7th February 2019 MoA which contained important highlights of the 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement and aggregated the cardinal arguments of the 2012 and 2013 MoUs and the 2017 MoA and for the failure to implement the December 2020 MoA which signing ended the longest strike in the history of our nation.

“Consequent upon the foregoing, our great Union has in the past one month undertaken a comprehensive review of the FGN’s handling of our welfare (where a Professor takes a gross salary of 416,000 naira only); level of implementation of our agreements and timelines, and lackadaisical attitude to tertiary education in Nigeria.

“As a follow-up, ASUU has commenced a one-week campus-by-campus mobilization, sensitization and conscientization of its members nationwide on the State of the Union viz a viz our cardinal demands and next line of action. Barring any last-ditch positive response from the FGN, therefore, we are well prepared to declaring a total, comprehensive and indefinite strike soonest,” the Union said.

Dr Lawal further said, the impending strike is beyond any watered-down release of funding for the revitalization of public universities and beyond any devalued and staggered payment of earned academic allowances.

“We are at the point of reasonable action on the part of the government. We insist on immediate and full implementation of our demands as contained in the December, 2020 MOA, the immediate signing into law and implementation of the Renegotiated 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement as submitted by the Munzali Jibril Committee in May 2021.”

He called for the unconditional deployment of the home-grown innovation of personnel administration and payment solution called the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as replacement for the discredited IPPIS in the Nigerian University System.