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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has explained that its meeting with the Prof. Nimi Briggs-led committee, last Tuesday, ended in a deadlock because the committee presented an award of a recommended Consolidated University Academic Salary Structure (CONUASS), prepared by the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC) to it.
ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, in a statement on Thursday, explained that the ‘award salary’ was against the principle of collective bargaining based on the Wages Boards and Industrial Council’s Decree No 1 of 1973, the Trade Dispute Act (1976), ILO Conventions 49 (1948), 91(1950), 154 (1988) and recommendation 153 (1981), Udoji Commission Report of 1974, and Cookey Commission Report of 1981.
“Unarguably, the government imposed the ongoing strike on ASUU and encouraged it to linger because of provocative indifference. The Munzali Jibril-led renegotiation committee submitted the first draft agreement in May 2021, but the government’s official response did not come until about one year later. Again, the “award” presented by the Nimi Briggs-led Team came across in a manner of take-it-or-leave-it on a sheet of paper. No serious country treats its scholars this way,” he said.
“Over the years, particularly since 1992, ASUU has always argued for and negotiated a separate salary structure for academics for obvious reasons. ASUU does not accept any awarded salary as was the case in the administration of General Abdulsalam Abubakar. The separate salary structures in all federal government/ASUU agreements were usually the outcome of collective bargaining processes.
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“The major reason given by the federal government for the miserly offer, paucity of revenue, is not tenable. This is because of several reasons chief of which was poor management of the economy. This has given rise to leakages in the revenue of governments at all levels. There is wasteful spending, misappropriation of funds and outright stealing of our collective patrimony.
“ASUU believes that if the leakages in the management of the country’s resources are stopped, there will be more than enough to meet the nation’s revenue and expenditure targets without borrowing and plunging the country into a debt crisis as is the case now.”
He noted that at the commencement of the renegotiation of the 2009 federal government/ASUU agreement on 16th March 2017, both parties agreed to be guided by some terms of reference, but the former reneged on its side to abide by the agreement.
He warned that the government’s move to set aside the principle of collective bargaining, which is globally in practice, has the potential of damaging lecturers’ psyche and destroying commitment to the university system, adding, “this is, no doubt, injurious to Nigeria’s aspiration to become an active player in the global knowledge industry.”
He suggested that the federal government, through the Ministry of Education, return to the new draft agreement of the 2009 Renegotiation Committee whose work spanned a total of five and half years as a demonstration of good faith.
