Buhari acceded to certain ASUU’s demands – Gbajabiamila
Femi Gbajabiamila, the speaker, House of Representatives, has said President Muhammadu Buhari acceded to “certain things”, in the effort to resolve the impasse between the government and the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
According to him, the National Assembly had provided for ASUU’s much-sought Revitalisation Fund in the N19.7trillion 2023 Appropriation Act. He also said the union and office of the accountant-general of the federation would meet to fashion out the workability of ASUU’s adopted payment system, UTAS.
He said: “I have visited the President twice. We spoke with Mr. President. There was one sticking point, the issue of no work no pay, the President did ask to digest the recommendations and would have one more meeting, which we did on Friday after the budget presentation.
“That meeting was even better than the first one we had with him and Mr. President has agreed to certain things but I’m not going to talk about that now.
“He would disclose whatever it is tomorrow (Tuesday) on that one remaining issue.
“But beyond that, the other issues have been taken care of. We were able to make sure that what ASUU was asking for in terms of the Revitalization Fund, in terms of salary, there has been significant improvement.
“Revitalization has been provided for in the budget, we made sure of that. The salary structure has been looked at, and there’s been an improvement as well and we made sure of that.
“The issue of UTAS is another important issue, both ASUU and the Office of the Accountant General and the government have agreed that they would work together to resolve the peculiarities of UTAS required for the payment plan and IPPIS. They will sit down together, and the Chairman of the House Committee on Tertiary Education will also be part of that tripartite sit-down arrangement to include all those things that are required by ASUU in the IPPIS platform.
“So I believe we’ve covered ground, we’ve covered most of the thorny issues and what we have agreed with ASUU now is basically to put everything on paper and sign off.
“I believe if we had met yesterday and the papers had been drawn up, I’m sure ASUU would have called off the strike today.
“But we’ve only just met today.”
“As I have stated, hopefully in the next couple of days, of course, once ASUU gets back to its base as well, once that is agreed, I’m very hopeful and very excited about the possibility or probability that the strike will be called off in a matter of days”.
