The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has given a
reason why it's meeting with the Federal Government of Nigeria ended in a
deadlock earlier this week.
ASUU said it rejected the Federal Government’s offer because
it is “miserable”.
ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, disclosed this in a
statement on Thursday titled, ‘Why ASUU rejects government’s award of salary’.
Recall that ASUU had on Tuesday met with the FG through the
Prof. Nimi Briggs committee.
The statement read, “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 is 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.”
Osodeke in the statement explained that the government
imposed the ongoing strike action on ASUU, saying FG had encouraged it to
linger because of its provocative indifference.
It read, “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, 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 in the world treats their scholars this way.”
It stressed that the government’s surreptitious move to set
aside the principle of collective bargaining, which was globally in practice,
had the potential of damaging lecturers’ psyche and destroying commitment to
the university system.
According to ASUU, this is, no doubt, injurious to Nigeria’s
aspiration to become an active player in the global knowledge industry.
“Rejecting a salary package arrived at through collective
bargaining is a repudiation of government’s pronouncements on reversing “brain
drain”. It is common knowledge that, more now than in the 1980s and 1990s,
Nigerian scholars, especially in scarce areas like science and medicine, are
migrating in droves to Europe, America and many parts of Africa such as South
Africa, Rwanda, and Ghana with supportive environment to ply their trades as
well as competitive reward systems for intellectual efforts. Does the Nigerian
government care about what becomes of public universities in another five or
ten years if this trend continues?”
Also, it stated that the New Draft Agreement had other major
recommendations for the funding of major components of the renegotiated 2009
FGN/ ASUU Agreement, saying “one of such recommendations is the tax on
cellphone and communication lines. Ironically, the Federal Ministry of Finance,
Budget, and National Planning recently announced its readiness to implement
ASUU’s recommendation, as a revenue source, but not for education, without
acknowledging the Union!”
The statement stressed that at the commencement of the
renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ ASUU Agreement on 16th March 2017, both the
Federal Government and ASUU teams agreed to be guided by the following
principles as their terms of reference: “Reversal of the decay in the Nigerian
University System, in order to reposition it for its responsibilities in
national development; Reversal of the brain drain, not only by enhancing the
remuneration of academic staff but also by disengaging them from the
encumbrance of a unified civil service wage structure; Restoration of Nigerian
Universities, through immediate, massive and sustained financial intervention;
and Ensuring genuine university autonomy and academic freedom.”
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