By Dayo Omoogun
The Federal Government agreed Thursday last week to release N30bn earned academic allowance to university lecturers across the country
fuelling hopes that the strike will soon be called off.
According to the agreement, the money will be paid in tranches over a 10 month period between May 2021 and February 2022.
The COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdown had taken a great toll on academic programs disrupting and distorting the calendar with far-reaching consequences for students as well as parents and guardians.
The compounding of an already bad situation by the subsisting face-off between the Federal Government and the lecturers’ union has an even more telling effect on stakeholders.
It is also believed that with the spate of youth protests which has been rocking the nation for about two weeks now, the government is desperately seeking for ways of returning students to school as soon as possible as a way of defusing the rising tension.
The government hinted at this when its lead representative and Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige, remarked shortly before the closed door meeting that students were being recruited into the #EndSARS protests following the closure of universities occasioned by the ASUU strike.
Looking forward to a speedy closure Ngige said, “For the past one week, we have all been on our toes; we have been meeting and we pray that this meeting will yield some good fruits.
In addition to the N30 billion for earned allowances, Sharpedgenews learnt that the Federal Government also promised to spend N20bn on the revitalisation of the education sector.
It is hoped that this time around the government will be faithful to its commitments by making good its promises as series of unfulfilled promises remains at the root of the perennial industrial crisis in the higher education sector.
However, the issue of the platform for the payment remains thorny and unresolved as the Academic Staff Union of Universities insisted it will not have anything to do with the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
While it has presented University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), a platform developed by the Union to the Federal Government it has conceded to go with the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) in the meantime.