We’re not talking about percentage, we‘re talking about the agreement, not percentage. How much did they present to us that they would give the academics during negotiations? Like we’ve insisted, we don’t accept gifts, we accept negotiated money.
By Deborah Hassan
365Daily – The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said it will not accept the Federal Government’s offer of 23.5 per cent salary increase for all categories of the workforce in federal universities and 35 per cent for professorial cadre.
ASUU has suspended academic activities since February 2022 over the alleged failure of the federal government to meet all its demands, which include the renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), payment of outstanding arrears of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA), release of the agreed sum of money for the revitalisation of public universities (federal and states), addressing of proliferation and governance issues in the state universities, settlement of promotion arrears, release of withheld salaries of academics, and payment of outstanding third-party deductions.
The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, made the government’s offer in Abuja on Tuesday, September 6, 2022, during a meeting on how to end the ASUU strike with pro-chancellors and vice chancellors of federal universities.
Adamu said the government arrived at the proposed increment after a series of meetings between President Muhammadu Buhari, the Ministers of Finance, Budget and National Planning; Labour and Productivity; Communications and Digital Economy; Education, the Director-General of the Budget Office and the Chairman of the Salaries and Wages Commission.
He added that sequel to deliberations, it was agreed that the Draft Agreement by Nimi Briggs Re-negotiation Team and the proposed salary increment were not in line with current realities of the national economy.
Adamu said the percentage of increment was all the government could afford, adding that President Muhammadu Buhari had warned the government negotiation team against signing any agreement which will not be implementable, while directing them to persuade the union to return to work.
He also assured that henceforth, allowances pertaining to ad-hoc duties of academic and non-academic staff shall be paid as and when due by the governing councils of universities to which such services are rendered and to the staff who perform them.
On revitalisation of federal universities, Adamu stated that N150 billion would be provided for in the 2023 budget to be disbursed to the institutions in the first quarter of the year, in addition to N50 billion for the payment of outstanding areas of earned academic allowances.
At the end of a closed-door meeting with the Pro-chancellors and Vice-chancellors, a Committee made up of four Pro-chancellors and four Vice-chancellors and others, to be chaired by the Minister was constituted to look into the additional demands by ASUU, with emphasis on areas where there had not been consensus such as the the no-work-no-pay policy and the remuneration of university lecturers.
The Committee was constituted through the Director of Public Affairs, Bem Ben Goong.
Members of the committee include Nimi Briggs, Olu Obafemi, Udo Udoma and Bashir Dalhatu and the Vice-chancellors of the University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the University of Benin and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, with the NUC Executive Secretary and four others.
However, the President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, has said they will only accept for the government to sign and implement agreements already reached as the new agreements were not in good faith but basically to blackmail members of the union.
He stated in an interview with Daily Trust: “We’re not talking about percentage, we‘re talking about the agreement, not percentage. How much did they present to us that they would give the academics during negotiations? Like we’ve insisted, we don’t accept gifts, we accept negotiated money.
“When you give us something, you can take it back the next day. But when we negotiate and sign the agreements, it’s binding on both parties. We’re talking about negotiated amounts, not percentage given,” he stated.
Asked to disclose the negotiated amount, Osodeke said, “Don’t worry, you’ll see that they’ve not finished. When they finish, the world will know. In collective bargaining, you don’t let out whatever you’re negotiating until you finish.
“That’s why we’re where we‘re today. They run to the press in order to try to blackmail the union; that is the problem. If they sit down and follow the rules of collective bargaining, we’ll not be where we’re today.” He clarified that both the union and the government had since concluded collective bargaining, saying it remained only signing.
“We concluded. They were supposed to go back and come back to sign. We will disclose when everything is over and sign.”
On its part, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors (CVC) of Nigerian Federal Universities has urged the Federal Government to reconsider its stand on ‘No Work No Pay’ and pay the withheld salaries on compassionate grounds in the interest of Nigerian students.
The VCs made the appeal in an emergency meeting to consider impasse between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government.
Chairman of CVC, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Professor Sulayman A. Abdulkareem, said in a statement that the Committee supports an upward salary review for lecturers, especially in the present dispensation where the templates used by the National Salaries, Incomes & Wages Commission and the IPPIS have depleted the salaries of academics and vice-chancellors, to an all-time low.
“Chief lecturers in polytechnics and colleges of education now earn more than professors in universities. The proposal by the Nimi Briggs committee should be revisited as their figures represent a better offer that will stem the tide of unrest in the universities,” the statement reads.
The VCs called for the immediate release of N170 billion to complete one tranche of the Needs Assessment Revitalisation Fund in line with the 2020 MoA to put close to the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement which the government agreed to include it in the 2023 budget.
They urged ASUU to be patient for the FG to include the demand in the 2023 budget as promised and appealed to the FG to expedite action on the release of the White Paper on the 2021 Visitation Panels report to the federal government.
While sympathising with students, parents and other stakeholders over the prolonged strike, they urged all parties to adopt a give-and-take option in the negotiations and employ decorum and decency in the language of communication.