Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities working with the Federal University of Lafia, on Tuesday, embarked on a peaceful protest to demand improved conditions of service and better welfare packages.
Our correspondent reports that the ASUU members who turned up for the protest in their numbers sang solidarity songs and carried placards with various inscriptions, such as “Pay our withheld salaries now,” “Starving lecturers is strangling education,” “ASUU rejects FG Tertiary institution loan,” and “Our campuses are unfit for teaching and learning,” among others.
Speaking with journalists shortly after the peaceful protest in the premises of the University in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, the FULafia ASUU Branch Chairperson, Sunday Orinya, noted that since the inception of the administration of President Bola Tinubu, the union had exhibited its proclivity for dialogue to resolve its differences with the government in order to address the challenges facing its members.
He, however, noted that despite all the efforts made to get the federal government to release the three and a half months of withheld salaries of its members, ensure payment of promotion arrears, and implement new conditions of service for its members, the government has yet to address their demands.
Orinya said, “We have chosen this route at great pain and loss of hundreds of our colleagues, hoping that we can collectively entrench a culture of industrial peace and harmony on our campuses. Our expectation was that our government would reciprocate our gesture by implementing the report of the Nimi Briggs Renegotiation Committee, considering the plight of our members. But what we have received in return is deceit and disappointment from government in its most callous form.
“After one year of waiting in vain for this administration to do the needful by signing the Briggs committee report, we had no choice but to give ultimatum to the government last year. Our disappointment was complete when the government responded by constituting yet another renegotiation committee, this time headed by Yayale Ahmed to renegotiate the 2009 agreement with ASUU.
“You will recall that after series of exceedingly rigorous constructive engagements, the FGN reached an agreement with our Union in 2009, famously called the FGN/ASUU 2009 Agreement. Almost seventeen years after this agreement was signed, its provisions were only partially implemented, while the conditions of service of academic staff, funding for, and autonomy of, our universities continue to be eroded in all our campuses.
“After years of pressure, insistence, and industrial actions, the FGN reluctantly agreed to commence the renegotiation of the Agreement, due since 2012, in 2017. To show the deceitful nature and character of our government, we have had four committees on the same issue. They include the Wale Babalakin 2017, Munzali Jubril 2020, Nimi Briggs 2022 and the Yayale Ahmed committee of 2024.
“It is curious that the Ahmed Committee submitted its report in February, but nothing has been heard from government. Many attempts by our leadership to know what is happening to the report from government have been shrouded by obfuscation.”
Orinya further noted that their demands in the FGN-ASUU 2009 Agreement have regrettably remained unresolved, mentioning the issues to include the renegotiation of the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement; the implementation of a new condition of service for academics; Revitalisation of Public Universities; University autonomy and academic freedom; and the reassessment of the legal frameworks for regulating bodies like the National Universities Commission and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board.
The FULafia ASUU Branch Chairperson noted that the union had observed with deep concern the spiralling crisis in Nigeria occasioned by widespread and rising insecurity, kidnapping, banditry, and insurgency in various parts of the country.
He lamented that the pervasive insecurity and its expression in kidnapping, killing and looting have negatively undermined the capacity of the Nigerian people and the country to foster progress and the general development of the nation, noting that the situation had brought about untold hardship, an unimaginably rising cost of food, oppressive fuel price regime and electricity tariffs, resulting in deepening poverty among Nigerians.
Orinya added, “Nigerian academics are finding it difficult to meet some basic demands such as feeding, shelter, medical care, and transportation. We have, in the past two years, witnessed an upsurge in the death rate of lecturers across the campuses of our public universities. At an average of 60 deaths reported at the quarterly National Executive Committee Meeting of the Union, we lose over 240 members every year due to pauperisation of academics due to the rising cost of commodity items, which has made the negotiated salary scale of 2009 useless.”
While calling on students, parents and the general public to hold the federal government responsible for any disruption in the academic calendar, Orinya said, “We thus demand that the following be done: Unconditional release of our Three and a Half months withheld salaries; Payment of promotion arrears of our members; Release of third-party deductions to union and cooperatives; Payment of one year arrears of 255/35 per cent salary award to our members; Implementation of the new conditions of service for our members; and the adoption of TITAS (UTAS) as payment system for universities.”