The strike embarked by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, which has closed almost all public universities in the country, has heading to 200 day.
Students and parents, who lamented the effects of the industrial action in separate interviews with The Gopde Global Resources on Thursday, condemned the failure of the Federal Government and the union to resolve the crisis and reopen the universities.
ASUU had in February declared a month-strike following the failure of the government to meet there demands, including the payment of earned allowances, payment of revitalisation funds to universities, the release of the white paper reports of visitation panels, implementation of the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) instead of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) for the payment of workers in the ivory towers and the renegotiation of the ASUU-FGN 2009 allowance.
The current strike, the university lecturers had in 2020 embarked on a nine-month industrial action, which they suspended on December 24 of that year.
Although ASUU declared a month strike on February 14 and had been rolling it over after the expiration of each declaration, its National Executive Council after its meeting in Abuja on August 29, said its industrial action would henceforth be “comprehensive, total and indefinite,” effective from 12am on Monday.
Various talks between the union and the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, yielded no result. Also, ASUU leaders walked out of a meeting with the government on August 16, alleging that no offer was made to them.
But the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, in an interview with journalists, said university lecturers insisted that they should be paid for the period they did not work, a request he said the government was not ready to grant.
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