The administration of President-elect Bola Tinubu will inherit the ongoing crisis between the Universities Academic Staff Union, ASUU, and the Federal Government as the demands of the union are yet to be met. Just two weeks ago on April 4, President Muhammadu Buhari approved N320,345,040,835 as the country’s 2023 intervention fund for public tertiary institutions of higher learning in this year’s budget.
Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Executive Secretary Sonny Echono made the announcement during the Fund’s annual strategic planning workshop attended by all heads of beneficiary institutions. The payment of N320.3 billion remains the largest in the last 30 years. According to the Buhari Media Organization (BMO), this serves as an intervention fund for institutions.
However, the National President of ASUU, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke said that the current administration does not value education.
He explained that the N320.3 billion euro is not part of the union’s current demands, saying they have been campaigning for it since 1994.
Aware that the Buhari-led government would expire in the coming weeks, the ASUU chairman said the union looked forward to engaging with the Bola Ahmed Tinubu government.
He said-
“The Federal Government has not met our demands. The N320.3 billion is not part of our demands. This is what we fought for in 1994. It is not Federal Government’s funding. It is funded by the public sector, and by taxpayers.
“Our plan is to see how we can interact with the next government with the hope that the next administration will have education as its priority unlike the current government that doesn’t care about education”.
Tinubu, the president-elect who is expected to take over leadership of the country from May 29, 2023, had during his campaigns in 2022, promised to prioritize education if elected president.
Among many other issues, the union is demanding the following:
- Funding for the revitalisation of tertiary institutions
- Payment of outstanding earned academic allowances (EAA)
- 26 per cent budgetary allocation to the educational sector
- Implementation of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS).
Recall that in 2022, the union shut down public universities across the country for at least eight months. They claimed that the federal government failed to meet its demands.
The Federal Government took ASUU to the National Industrial Court following the collapse of negotiations. However, this happened after several failed attempts to resolve the issues and ensure lecturers return to their classes in 2022,
The Court, therefore, granted the government’s request to compel ASUU members to resume work pending the resolution of the case.
The court order for ASUU to resume work was also confirmed by the Appeal Court. This was after the trade union appealed its case.
The Court of Appeal gave ASUU until October 14 to comply with the order or be charged with contempt. As a result, on October 14 the protracted industrial action was suspended.
cc: Daily Post Ng
