“No cogent reason why still on strike” — FG faults ASUU for lingering strike

The Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, has repremanded the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for refusing to call off its industrial strike action.

Nwajiuba made this known during an interview at the Nigerian Annual Education Conference in Abuja on Tuesday. He said the union has no cogent reason to be on strike since all their demands except one have been met by the federal government.

The conference was themed “Building an Effective, Resilient and Sustainable Education System for Nigeria during and Post COVID-19 Pandemic: The Way Forward.”

The minister claimed that the government has met all but one of ASUU’s five demands.

“I wouldn’t want to speak about ASUU anymore. I’ve said repeatedly that government has met all ASUU’s demands. The one outstanding demand is that ASUU insists on having their own Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) instead of being subject to the government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS),” he said.

According to him, the federal government’s IPPIS payment platform is not designed to be punitive to anybody. It is a holistic system, if you have a superior one, then we can migrate to it when it is proven to be superior, he said.

He said it the responsibility of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to evaluate ASUU’s UTAS platform, something NITDA is currently doing.

On Earned Academic Allowances, Mr Nwajiuba said the government is in agreement with ASUU and is “not worried about earned allowances.”

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