The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will today file an appeal against the ruling of the National Industrial Court (NIC), which directed its members to resume work after being on strike for over seven months.
Counsel for ASUU, Mr Femi Falana told The PUNCH in Abuja that the union got the certified true copy of the judgment on Thursday.
While asking the lecturers to return to work on Wednesday, Justice Polycarp Hamman said that the strike action has had impacts on the lives of the students.
ASUU embarked on the industrial action on 14 February demanding government’s implementation of the Memorandum of Action on funding for revitalisation of public universities, which was signed in December 2020.
Other are Earned Academic Allowances, renegotiation of the 2009 agreement and the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) for staff payment, among others.
On Thursday, Falana told The PUNCH: “The appeal will be filed first thing Friday morning”.
The Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU) has however said that the Federal Government should not have dragged ASUU to court over the dispute.
CVCNU Chairman, Prof. Samuel Edoumiekumo said: “The matter is not a court issue. A lecturing job is not one you force people to do because it is a knowledge-based job.
“The best is to mutually understand one another. If, as a student, you go to the class now and you are not given knowledge, what will be the outcome? We are pleading that ASUU, FG, and other stakeholders should come together and dialogue and settle it”.
ASUU Chairman at the Ebonyi State University, Ikechukwu Igwenyi also said that the Federal Government has declared “war” against members of the union by approaching the NIC. He pointed out that the “no work, no pay” policy of the government shows the that authority lacked an understanding of the nature of the contract between the lecturers and their employees.
“The NIC ordered ASUU to call off the ongoing strike and return to the classroom with empty stomachs and unpaid bills pending the determination of the suit filed against the union by the Federal Government,” he said.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has asked key government officials to appear before it next Thursday to further find a way around the payment issue, which is one of the points raised by the striking lecturers. This followed the verdict of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) that the payment option suggested by the lecturers – UTAS – and two others failed integrity tests.
Expected at next Thursday’s meeting are the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige; Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha; Head of Civil Service, Mrs Folashade Yemi-Esan; and the acting Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Sylva Okolieaboh. Others include the Director General, Salaries, Income and Wages Commission and the Director General Budget Office.
NITDA had told the House leadership that between March and June this year, it subjected UTAS, the Integrated Payroll Personnel Information System (IPPIS) and the University Peculiar Personnel and Payroll System (U3PS) to integrity tests regarding the university payroll, which they all failed.
A NITDA official at the meeting said that the government had earlier directed the agency to test UTAS in October 2020, and that the platform failed the two integrity tests conducted on it.
He said following the first test, ASUU was asked to go back and review, which it did. Yet, the platform did not meet NITDA’s requirements the second time, according to him.
For the third time, NITDA was then asked to conduct tests on UTAS, IPPIS and U3PS, which the official said all the three platforms failed its requirements regarding the payroll system of universities.
Not satisfied with the explanation, the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila asked if NITDA advised the government to take action on the lapses found on IPPIS, which has been in operation by government since 2011. But the NITDA official said they were not in a position to do that.
Gbajabiamila also asked if NITDA queried the IPPIS platform, to which the official responded in the negative.
The Deputy Speaker, Hon Idris Wase also expressed reservations at NITDA’s action, saying it ought to have advised the government on the appropriate action to take in view of its discovery on IPPIS.
However, the Head of Service, in her explanation, said the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy wrote her office following NITDA’s observations about IPPIS on the need to take a holistic look at the platform and that a committee was empaneled to carry out the assignment.
Yemi-Esan also noted that IPPIS is not just a payment platform but that it also has a human resource component, which all government agencies have been directed to activate, noting that all those directly under her purview have since complied.
Also, Okolieaboh said that under no circumstance should employees dictate to their employers how they should be paid, faulting ASUU’s insistence on UTAS.
