Having known weeks before the strike began, Nigeria’s Federal Government had to wait four days before it made a move towards addressing one ASUU’s demands.

The government Thursday, announced the setting up of 21 panels to draft the whitepapers for the reports of visitations earlier sent to Nigerian tertiary institutions to review the activities of the various tertiary institutions across the country.

According to a statement by the Director, Press and Public Relations at the Ministry of Education, Ben Goong, the Education Minister, Adamu Adamu, constituted 10 panels for 36 universities; six for 25 polytechnics, and five for 21 colleges of education.

The statement noted that the panels, to be inaugurated in the coming days, are given two weeks from the date of inauguration to submit their reports.

Why?

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) had demanded that the government release whitepapers on the reports of the visitation panels constituted by President Muhammadu Buhari in April 2021 to visit 88 tertiary institutions across the country.

They lamented that many months after the submission of reports to the government it is yet to release the whitepapers.

While declaring its warning strike on Monday, ASUU demanded an immediate release of the whitepapers to address the lapses in the administration of federal universities.

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Parts of the visitation panel’s term of references in April 2021, was to review the performance of each institution assigned in the area of governance, academic standards, quality assurance, management of finances, relationships between the management and the staff, as well as the structures of the schools’ infrastructure and instructional materials.

Adamu Adamu expresses shock

Adamu Adamu has expressed surprise over the one-month industrial action embarked upon by ASUU on Monday. This is as he said, if after several negotiations between ASUU and FG they have not reached a truce, then the fault is no longer the government’s.

According to him, “ASUU, unfortunately, they have gone on strike and I am looking for them because all the issues are being addressed.

“The last thing that happened was that our committee looked at their demands but there are renegotiations going on. They submitted a draft agreement which the ministry is looking at.”

Speaking of ASUU’s draft agreement, he said, “A committee is looking at it. Immediately it finishes, the government is meant to announce what it had accepted. Then suddenly, I heard them going on strike.”

He continues, “We want a peaceful resolution. The federal government is ready to meet them on all issues they have raised and if there are so many meetings and the gap is not closing, then I think it’s not the fault of the government.

“There is a solution to this. The negotiations are the solution and that is why I have said that I am surprised that ASUU has gone on strike.”

Chris Ngige faults the strike

According to Punch, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige Wednesday stated that the ongoing strike by ASUU was a “leave” following the failure of the union to notify his ministry before embarking on strike.

He said, “Now, NIREC met with ASUU twice and they discussed some of these issues. The leadership of ASUU said they would go back and meet with their NEC. We were waiting for them to come back and then we heard they were going on strike.

“ASUU failed to get back to us and proceeded on strike without sending notifications. They just gave themselves a leave. If you want to go on strike, you should at least inform us officially by giving us notification but they refused to.

“You can not just go on strike like that, it is illegal. So, they are just on leave. We will work with them and they will call off the strike.”

What ASUU says

ASUU, February 15, 2022, says its industrial action can end in one week if the federal government meets its demands.

Speaking on Sunrise Daily, on Channels Television, ASUU’s vice-president, Christopher Piwuna, said the strike can be called off as soon as government does what it is “supposed to do”.

“We hope that the one-month warning strike will allow the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) to prove themselves and the chief of staff will speak to these individuals to say that the needful should be done,” the ASUU VP said.

Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba had in December 20, 2021, said resources were not enough to meet all the demands of ASUU at once.

Some of the demands are the payment of earned allowances, payment of revitalisation funds to universities, creation of visitation panels and implementation of the University Transparency Accountability Solution instead of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System for the payment of workers in the ivory towers, among others.

He said, “We cannot possibly be blackmailing them; we tried to explain to them that we will fulfil the agreements when we have the resources. Agreements have been signed and they are meant to be fulfilled.”

There is an obvious back and forth on the pending issues, and neither ASUU or the federal government is willing to come to a compromise. While ASUU’s actions suggests that a compromise will affect them negatively, FG has not shown will to meet ASUU’s demands.