SO SAD:ASUU,GOVT Talks Crashes

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Suswam

ASUU, govt talks crash

Hopes of an early resolution of the government-varsity teachers crisis faded yesterday.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) suddenly withdraw from talks with the government, which it claimed was insincere.

Teachers in the 61 public universities shunned their jobs on July 1 after declaring an industrial action over the refusal of the Federal Government to honour the terms of the 2009 ASUU/Federal Government agreement.

Since then, ASUU has been negotiating with two committees set up by the government.

The committees are headed by Benue State Governor Gabriel Suswam and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Anyim Pius Anyim.

Suswam announced that the government had offered N30b as earned allowances for the lecturers in the 61 public universities.

But the lecturers are asking for N92billion.

Yesterday, ASUU President Dr. Nasir Isa Faggae said the union would only return to the negotiation table after the 2009 agreement had been honoured. He spoke at a news conference at the University of Lagos (UNILAG).

He said: “Our members are left with no other choice than to prosecute this strike to its logical conclusion. ASUU members nationwide are saying this strike will not be suspended until and unless the government respects the 2009 Agreement and makes concrete efforts to implement it in the best interest of the country.”

The ASUU boss accused government of being blunt, declaring that it neither had any motive to revitalise public universities through committed funding, nor was it ready to pay in full the accumulated Earned Academic Allowances between 2009 and 2013.

“Rather, it (Federal Government) is talking about providing N30 billion to assist various governing councils of federal universities to defray the arrears of N92 billion owed to all categories of staff in the university system. It was a sinister ‘take it or leave it’ threat of grab-the-crumbs or starve-to-death,” he said.

Dr Faggae who lamented that never in the history of ASUU has it been so ridiculed and embarrassed by governemt representatives during any negotiations, alleged that some government agents were bent on using the struggle to enrich themselves.

The union also accused government of using propaganda by misinforming the public that ASUU’s demand of the Earned Academic Allowances triggered off the strike. Faggae said this has become a recurring decimal at almost every meeting the union holds with government representatives whereas, the unions always sought implementation of the funding of universities as part of the demands.

“The ASUU team was particularly amused that government believed that what our members are looking for is just money to spend. Why else would the minister of finance dangle N30 billion as if it was a dole out when, in fact, that amount of money was unrelated to the agreement and the work of the implementation committee. We have said it everywhere, all the time and we still say it here again that our members have earned their allowances by working for them. They are not begging for crumbs from government. The Nigerian government owes them and they deserve to be paid.

“As a union whose members constitute the intellectual cream of the society and which operates on the basis of principles, we find the events of August 20 and of recent positions on the matter by government as embarrassing, bewildering and highly unacceptable. ASUU cannot believe that the agreement, the MoU and the Needs Assessment Report undertaken and endorsed by the highest public officials in the land, would be so blatantly ridiculed by the same people.”

Going down memory lane, Faggae recalled that the 2009 Agreement captured a funding requirement of N1.5 trillion to be spread between 2009-2001, noting that the three years lapsed without government doing anything.

He said this gave rise to the the MoU it signed last January when government also promised to stimulate the university system through N100 billion intervention fund and another N400b each for 2013, 2014 and 2015.

However, he said for government to know universities areas of priority, it initiated the Committee on Needs Assessment of Nigerian Universities (CNANU) which submitted its report to the Federal Government in July 2012.

“”It is important to stress that by our own estimation, the MoU should have fetched Nigerian public universities a total sum of N500 billion by now if government were to faithfully implement the understanding reached with ASUU. A continuation of that process would have yielded a revitalisation fund of N1.3 trillion by 2015.

“In the alternative, government could have set the estimated sum of N800 billion required to implement the short term recommendations of the Needs Assessment Report for 2012 and the 2013 put together. But alas, all the government is gloating over now is N100 billion which is nowhere near the scientifically-arrived congruent sums in the 2009 Agreement, the 2012 MoU and the 2013 technical report on the Needs Assessment of Nigerian Public Universities. What further evidence do we need to establish government’s bad faith?”

Faggae lamented that ASUU has had countless meetings with Suswam’s committee, noting that recently, government reverted to its old song of ‘no fund’.

“We are at pains to report that this epitomises a grand design to frustrate the 2009 Agreement and all other procedures related to it. This is highly unfortunate. How could the same federal government that within the last three years, generously supported private concerns like the airlines and banks with trillions of naira from the public vaults as ‘bail outs’, suddenly turn around to say it has no fund to conscientiously revitalise its own public universities? The government largesse, which was extended to Nollywood is still fresh in our memory”

Faggae described the Suswam committee as a smokescreen “to hoodwink unsuspecting Nigerians” on the N100 billion carrot government is currently dangling for the implementation of the Needs Assessment Report.

He added that the union discovered that government had already perfected plans to divert 70 per cent of the yearly allocation by Tertiary Education Training (TetFund) to make up the N100 billion, a situation he said is unacceptable to the union.

“And unless or until the Suswam Committee gives the union a guarantee that it will not serve as another means of recycling TetFund money and of diverting funds meant for universities, ASUU representatives will not continue to participate in deliberations with that committee.”

He said ASUU had it on good authority that 75 per cent of the money to be released would not be released directly to ASUU but handed over to the federal ministry of education or the National Universities Commission. He described such move as ‘illegal’.

Go back to work, Suswam urges teachers

Benue State Governor Gabriel Suswam yesterday urged the striking lecturers to return to work, saying most of the issues which led to the strike have been “substantially addressed”.
Suswam who is the head of one of government’s negotiating teams, spoke to reporters in Abuja at the end of the meeting of the Implementation and Monitoring Committee of the Needs Assessment Report on Nigerian Public Universities.
He said: “The contentious issue of the Earned Allowances for which the federal government has approved N30billion for immediate release to the universities to enable them pay their staff after due verification of the various claims of their workers.”
The meeting, which held at the Benue Governor’s Lodge was attended by the Ministers of Education; Labour and Productivity; Representatives of both the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Education, representatives of federal agencies involved in funding university education and the various workers unions in the university system.
Suswam said the meeting unanimously adopted a report of its technical sub- committee which had earlier carried out the distribution of the funds to each of the beneficiary universities based on a criteria adopted from the Needs Assessment Report.
According o the governor, at least 59 federal and state universities across the country would benefit from the N100billion fund to address the gross deficit in critical infrastructure, adding that each of the 36 states would have one university covered in the first phase of the intervention programme.
He said the the N100billion would be used to build new hostels, renovate existing hostels, provide libraries, laboratories, lectures rooms and theatres, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilities, among others.
Suswam explained that the distribution of the fund was done in a fair and equitable manner based on properly defined criteria, adding that a representative of ASUU participated in the technical sub- committee which made recommendations to the main committee.
“Our Committee will present the spreadsheet of the projects to Mr President for his approval after which the funds would be released to the Governing Councils of the benefitting Universities,” he said.