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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said it does not trust the Federal Government to keep its promise to university lecturers, owing to the failure of the latter to honour past agreements.
ASUU president Prof Emmanuel Osodeke stated this at the resumed meeting, between the Union, Acting Accountant General of the Federation, Sylva Okolieaboh and the speaker of the House of Representatives, on Monday, in Abuja.
Osodeke, who led other ASUU leaders to the meeting told Gbajabiamila that the union called off its eight-month strike, recently, based on the trust it has in the speaker, giving his commitment to the resolution of the issues between it and the government. He added that no agreement was signed before the strike was called off.
The speaker has been mediating the labour dispute between the federal government and ASUU, which stalled academic activities in the country’s Universities for eight months.
Gbajabiamila, at the resumed parley, had thanked ASUU for calling off its strike, noting that the meeting was convened to discuss issues surrounding the payment platform, which was one of the contentious issues, between the government and the university lecturers.
The Speaker, while responding to the concerns, that government has repeatedly failed to honour previous agreements with ASUU, said that in the past, the National Assembly was not part of any of the negotiations.
“I thank you for ending the strike. I assure you everything will be done to make sure that the issue remains resolved. The best way to move forward is to have the Accountant General tell us the way forward. You called off the strike based on trust and I appreciate that. If we are now asking for a signed document, where’s the place of trust?,” he stated.
“Let’s give it time. I have written to the ministry on the issue of the white paper. We are taking these things one by one. We have 500 billion in the budget and so on and so forth.
“Let bygones be bygones. Let us tarry a while and see. An agreement has been made, we are here to make sure that the agreement is practical and not theoretical.”
Okolieaboh, while appealing to ASUU to trust the government, said the union’s peculiarity will be accommodated in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system (IPPIS) within three months.
According to him, “We are accommodating some of those peculiarities that ASUU is talking about. I want the leadership of ASUU to trust us. We in the AG office are going to accommodate every concern of ASUU. I hope that if this is all that is left on the table, we are going to resolve it today.”
