Federal University of Technology, Owerri, chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, on Wednesday said lecturers should not be blamed if academic activities were grounded in the university.
The union accused the Federal Government of deliberately destroying the country’s educational system and toying with the future of Nigerian children.
The ASUU FUTO chairman, Chinedu Ihejirika, said at a press briefing in Owerri that the federal government was deliberately forcing ASUU to shut all public universities, nationwide by reneging to honour the Memoranda Of Understanding and Memoranda Of Action the association agreed with the government since 2009.
The lecturers vowed that the looming strike will be “comprehensive and irreversible.”
Ihejirika said, “ASUU is not making any fresh demand, rather we are insisting that all Memoranda Of Understanding and Memoranda Of Action be implemented. The contending issues include but are not limited to the signing of the renegotiated 2009 agreement.
“Adoption of UTAS as payment for all salaries of lecturers as against the IPPIS platform. Regulating the proliferation of state owed and private universities by amending the National Universities Commission Act. Release of the findings of the various visitation panels to universities.
“Payment of arrears of Earned Academic Allowances and its mainstreaming into monthly salaries from 2021 and release of funds for the revitalization of public universities. These issues form the crux of the matters for the looming industrial action.”
Ihejirika said that instead of the federal government implementing the 2009 MOU and MOA with ASUU, it rather chose to introduce a ‘fraud-ridden salary payment system called Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System.’
He said that IPPIS is a payment system that had slashed the salaries of lecturers and had also made lecturers not receive their salaries for many months.