Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige has said that everything is on course to resolve the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) following the implementation of the 2020 December agreement reached with ASUU,
The minister, who spoke to State House Correspondents after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday said the federal government has so far paid over N92 billion as earned allowances and revitalisation fees to federal government-owned universities across the country.
According to him, “Why I said that the 2020 December agreement we had with ASUU is on course in terms of implementation, is that in that agreement, there is a line that says the federal government should pay N40 billion for (Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) for ASUU and other unions, that has been paid.
“N30 billion was also budgeted or was to be paid for revitalization that also was paid late last year. N22.127 billion was agreed also upon in that December agreement, to be paid from the supplementary budget as Earned Allowances for 2021, that money was also paid last year; it was put in the supplementary budget which was passed around June-July and the money was remitted. So, the government has done that.”
He also noted that deliberations have commenced on introducing the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) payment platform as preferred by university lecturers instead of the government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
“UTAS, which the universities developed has been subjected to test by the body responsible for that, Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), which ran a user acceptance test also called integrity and vulnerability test, but in their report, they pointed out to ASUU, the areas of lapses in that platform, which will not make it usable as presently configured,” the Minister said.
Ngige, however, noted that ASUU has written back to NITDA on the grounds that some of those observations were not correct while disclosing that arrangements have now been concluded for the technical teams of NITDA and ASUU to meet and jointly repeat the test on the UTAS platform.
