The Academic Staff Universities Union, ASUU, has actually threatened to resume its nine months old suspended strike, following the federal government’s failure to keep to the arrangement upon which it suspended the strike in December 2020.

The Chairperson of ASUU, University of Uyo chapter, Dr Happiness Uduk, who revealed this to newsmen on Wednesday soon after a sensitization/mobilization walk by members, explained that ASUU had from the start told FG of its resolve to return to strike without notice if it (FG) reneged from the agreement, which declared the FG did.

She lamented that the Buhari-led administration has pushed the union to the point that it has no choice than to embark on an indefinite strike.

According to her, “The Federal Government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, has now sufficiently pushed the union, once more, to the precipice of an across the country overall and indefinite strike through its failure to honour the Memorandum of Action reached with ASUU in December, 2020, upon which the union suspended conditionally its nine-month strike of March to December 2020.

“Today, well over one year later on, we are sorry for to notify the Nigerian public, through you (the press), that the federal government has actually revealed no sincerity to those terms, and absolutely nothing much has changed.

“We have waited most patiently for the federal government for over one year, and yet, there is no concrete sign that the federal government means to do anything to fend off the ugly situation of another avoidable strike.”

Speaking on the agitations and concerns of members in the Memorandum of Action with FG, Uduk noted that ASUU wants renegotiation, finalizing and implementation of the 2009 Agreement that was suggested to be reviewed every three years.

The chairperson was sorry for that, 11 years afterwards, the arrangement was yet to be reviewed, including that the ramification remained that university speakers still earn the very same salaries they were making given that 2009 despite the present financial realities.

The union likewise called for the execution of the University Transparency Accountability Solution, UTAS, and once again rejected the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the FG’s suggested payment platform for them, saying, technically, IPPIS has actually abrogated the universities’ autonomy and authority to fire and work with staff, which according to them is “about the worst disaster the country’s instructional system has actually ever suffered.”

The chairperson further lamented that due to the obnoxious IPPIS platform, more than 22 academic personnel of the university (UniUyo) have actually not received their salaries considering that February 2020.

Also, the union regretted that the FG has actually bastardized the university system with the expansion of universities by state federal governments without commensurate funding and prompted the federal government to check the abnormality.

The union, however, thanked the nation’s inter-religious groups for their intervention in averting the possibility of resuming the strike, but regretted that the federal government remained determined to their (ASUU) plights, therefore leaving them without any alternative than to start an industrial action.

DAILY POST reports that earlier, the sis unions of NASU, SSANU and NANS all promised their solidarity with ASUU and promised to join them in the action even as all of them walked round the primary gate of the university bearing placards of various engravings such as ‘End this unholy act now’, ‘UNIUYO speakers are threatened’, ‘Protect our only university from collapse’ to name a few as part of activities of sensitizing the public about the approaching strike.