ASUU extends strike after expiration of initial three-month warning

ASUU, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, has added another four weeks to the ongoing strike that was first initiated more than five months ago.

Recall that on February 14, 2022, public universities were closed by striking lecturers because the Federal Government was unable to put the Memorandum of Action (MoA) that the two parties had signed in 2020 into effect.

In a statement released on Monday, August 1, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, the national president of ASUU, said the decision to extend the strike was made to give the FG more time to settle all of the pressing problems brought up.

The event followed an emergency meeting of the union’s National Executive Council convened on Sunday at the Comrade Festus Iyayi National Secretariat in Abuja.

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ASUU said the emergency meeting of its NEC became necessary since it publicly announced a 12-week extension of the strike in May.

It said the Nigerian government has not shown commitment to resolving the lingering crisis and said the additional four weeks will be observed to monitor the government’s seriousness and commitment to address its concerns.

The statement reads in part; “Following extensive deliberations and taking cognisance of Government’s past failures to abide by its own timelines in addressing issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MOA), NEC resolved that the strike be rolled over for four weeks to give Government more time to satisfactorily resolve all the outstanding issues. The role-over strike action is with effect from 12.01a.m. on Monday, 1st August, 2022.

“Specifically, NEC recalled the government’s failure to conclude the process of renegotiating the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, deploy the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), pay outstanding arrears of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA), release agreed sum of money for the revitalisation of public universities (Federal and States), address proliferation and governance issues in State Universities, settle promotion arrears, release withheld salaries of academics, and pay outstanding third-party deductions led to the initial declaration of the roll-over strike on 14th February 2022.“