ASUU President Says Information Minister Is Contradicting Himself

The National President of ASUU, Nassir Faggae, has said that the Federal Government’s committee led by Governor Suswam is unwilling to implement the recommendations of the needs assessment report, adding that the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku contradicted himself by stating that the Federal Government cannot afford ASUU’s allowance despite the fact that the economy of the nation has improved.

Speaking on Sunrise, he gave reasons why the on-going strike is yet to come to an end despite the FG’s efforts to meet the association’s needs.

“The situation is that government decided to disaggregate the issues in contention into two.” One of which is funding, which has been referred to the committee led by Governor Suswam” but “we had to pull out of that committee because it became clear to us that the committee was not really interested in implementing the needs assessment report. Rather, what the committee was out to do was to politicise the issue of the strike,” he said.

He raised the issue of allowances for academic and non-academic staff of Universities over a period of 3 years, since 2009, a total of N92 billion which the FG through the Minister of Finance said it cannot afford,offering N30 billion to ASUU to “either take it or leave it”.

He said afterwards, the Minister of Information,Labaran Maku re-echoed the statements of the Finance Minister,Okonjo-Iweala saying the Federal Government does not have the money to implement the ASUU agreement, and in another gathering, the Information Minister said the economy has significantly grown, so the Information Minister has contradicted himself on these two statements.

“I find it difficult to understand what is the position of the minister, telling Nigerians that our economy has grown, while in the same vein telling Nigerians that the government does not have the money to implement issues related to educational development of this country. I think there’s a contradiction” he said calling on the minister to make the situation clear.

The association expected the committee to draw a road map by which all the 10 recommendations presented in the needs assessment report will be implemented but the committee “singled out about 1 and a half recommendations” and made a lot of publicity at the point of implementations.

Mr Faggae insisted that the association will make a decision after its letter to the committee, which states its observations, receives a response.

“We are not interested in negotiating the 2009 agreement yet. What we are interested in doing is getting the 2009 agreement implemented first and then we can commence the process of review,” he said.