ASUU THREATENS TO RESUME STRIKE AS FG FAILS TO IMPLEMENT 2020 MOA

Reporter : CHUKWUDI CHUKWUENYE

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Owerri zone has threatened to embark on another round of strike following federal government failure to implement the Memorandum of Action (MOA) signed with the union in December 2020

Briefing journalists in Awka, the ASUU Zonal Coordinator, Comrade Uzo Onyedinamma, explained that the Federal Government had breached most of the timelines on the MOA. According to ASUU Owerri Zone, the MOA specified that the Federal Government is to pay thirty billion naira by end of January 2021 as part of one trenche of the two hundred and twenty billion naira that was to be paid to Universities but nothing was paid up to the moment.

Comrade Onyedinamma stated that the union had developed the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as a viable alternative to the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), which he said did not meet the peculiarity of the country’s university system.

 The union, while describing as untrue the claim by government that IPPIS addresses the wide corruption in the financial management of universities, called for the release of the white paper and the report of the Visitation Panels to federal universities as well as reconstitute the governing councils of the three universities of Agriculture at Abeokuta, Makurdi and Umudike. The university teachers appealed to the federal government to avoid the vicious circle of “no work no pay and no pay no work,” which they noted would do no one any good.

The leadership of ASUU Owerri Zone made up of its branches in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka; Imo State University, Owerri; Federal University of Agriculture, Umudike; Federal University of Technology, Owerri; Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University; Igbariam among others were present at the briefing .