By; PATRICK TITUS, Uyo
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Uyo branch, on Wednesday embarked on a peaceful protest over the federal government’s continued refusal to honour agreements with the Union.
Members of the union marched to the main gate of the University bearing placards of various inscriptions such as ‘End this unholy act Now’, ‘UNIUYO lecturers are endangered’, ‘Protect our only University from collapse’ among others.
Earlier, ASUU in an enlarged meeting, which had other unions such as the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU), Senior Staff Union of Universities (SSANU) in attendance hinted of plan to embark on another round of indefinite strike.
ASUU chairperson in UNIUYO, Dr. Happiness Uduk in a press conference said that the FG has not kept to the Memorandum of Action it entered with the Union in December 2020 which neccesitated the Union to suspend its nine months strike.
Apart from its refusal to honour agreements, Dr. Uduk said the FG has bastardized the University system with the profileration of Universities by State governments and the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System ((IPPIS).
She mentioned that more than 22 academic staff of the University have not received their salaries since February 2020 because of IPPIS even as the University teachers have remained on the same salary level since 2009.
She said, “Broadly speaking, the highlights of the MOA were renegotiation, signing and implementation of the 2009 agreement between the union and the federal government, implementation of the UTAS to replace the corruption-prone, obnoxious IPPIS.
“Payment of arrears of our members’Earned Academic Allowances as due and mainstreaming subsequent payments into the budget, review of the NUC laws to check the current indiscriminate establishment of Universities by State governments while abandoning the existing ones in terms of funding and provision of facilities and adequate well-being of the staff and payment of staff promotion arrears, University autonomy”.
“You will remember that when our union suspended its strike in December 2020 the condition was that the union would resume the strike without any notice to the government if the federal government failed to honour the terms upon which that strike was suspended”.
