Mary Onyia
There appears to be no end in sight of the on-going Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASSU, strike, as the Union has extended the strike by another 12 weeks in what it posited as the ‘unserious’ position of the Federal Government concerning the various issues at stake.
The roll over strike takes effect from 12;01 am on May 8, 2022, The decision was taken after ASSU’s national executive council meeting, during which ASSU accused FG of being unserious.
However, Federal Government has reacted by putting the blame on ASSU, claiming that the Union seemed not to want an end to this crisis. The FG had accused ASSU of failing to turn up at the meeting, scheduled for Sunday by the Ministry of Labour to find a way out of the stalemate.
But ASUU stated that it did not receive any notice of a meeting. According to ASSU, they did not receive any invitation from the FG, and were not required to attend any meeting when they have not been invited.
This was revealed by the National President, ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, who explained that the union had yet to receive any notice of a meeting from any Federal Government ministry.
Osodeke in the statement accused the FG of deliberating delaying to take the necessary action to resolving the issue claiming that the Union had given the government enough time within whoch to reach a decision.
He said, “No, we have not received any notice of meeting from them. They didn’t call us. We are not begging them to meet with us and we will not go to them if they do not invite us. It is part of his (Ngige’s) political campaign, we didn’t receive an invite.
“No meeting, if we do not hear from them, our National Executive Council will meet at the expiration of this week.”
There are indications that ASUU may extend its 12-week old strike after members of its National Executive Council held a crucial meeting in Abuja to deliberate on the strike.
The group said that it may take such a decision due to the alleged ‘insincerity’ of the government delegation to meet up to its part of the agreement.
Meanwhile, the Trade Union Congress in Kogi State also blames the Federal Government for the lingering strike.
He alleged that the body language of President Muhammadu Buhari, during the ongoing strike showed that his regime had no plan for the future of Nigerian youths.
Ojo, while expressing worries over the continuous crisis rocking the nation’s educational sector, explained that students are always at the receiving end when unions down tools to press home their demands.
ASSU is demanding, among other things, the release of revitalization funds for universities, renegotiation and implementation of the 2009FGN/ASSU agreement