The Academic Staff Union of Universities has said the insistence of the Federal Government that lecturers would be paid via the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information Scheme was not the cause of its unending strike.
This was revealed by the Yola Zone Coordinator of ASUU, Prof. Augustine Ndaghu, on Friday.
Ndaghu said the dispute between the union and the Federal Government was based on a Memorandum of Action, which government had failed to execute since February 7, 2019.
He said: “For the records, the IPPIS is not the reason why we are currently on strike.
“We are on strike because of Federal Government’s unwillingness to honour the 2019 Memorandum of Action addressing five fundamental issues in contention.
“In our understanding, IPPIS is a distraction plan by government to retrogress the wheel of progress of the smooth resolution of the contentious issues.”
Ndaghu said two of the five major issues in dispute are the provision of revitalisation fund for public universities and the constitution of visitation panels to federal universities.
The other three, he said, were renegotiation of a 2008 FG-ASUU agreement, payment of arrears of Earned Academic Allowances and the proliferation of state universities and their affairs.
The coordinator accused some top Federal Government officials of deliberately trying to deny the children of common citizens of access to tertiary education.
“From their body language, we now understand that funding public universities is waste of funds,” Ndaghu said.
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