The
National Assembly is reaching out to three key agencies of the Federal
Government in efforts to end the strike by members of the Academic
Staff Union of Universities.
The agencies are the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
Findings by The PUNCH on Sunday
showed that the Senate and House Committees on Education initiated the
joint move “as an urgent intervention strategy to save university
education from crumbling.”
The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, had stated last Wednesday that meeting ASUU’s demands
would cost the government N92bn.
She claimed that the government could
not afford the money due to an already bloated recurrent bill. However,
ASUU, replied her, saying that its demands would cost government N87bn
and not the N92bn.
Our correspondent gathered that the
National Assembly mediated in the more than two-month old strike by
setting up a contact committee, which met with ASUU leaders and
government officials.
The committee reportedly reviewed ASUU’s
demands and “assessed the financial implications before looking into
possible funding options outside the regular budget provided by the
Federal Government.”
A source privy to the details of the committee’s work, informed The PUNCH
that it “penciled down the NNPC, CBN and TETFUND, among other agencies
of government that can assist in providing support funds to resolve the
problem.”
It was gathered that the agencies had
indicated interest in contributing funds to rescue university education,
though it was unclear as of Sunday how much each of the agencies was
ready to contribute.
The Chairman, House Committee on Education, Mr. Aminu Suleiman, confirmed the intervention efforts of the legislature to The PUNCH on Sunday.
Suleiman said it was the contact committee that would prepare a report on what each agency would contribute.
He clarified that TETFUND already had a
constitutional duty to fund tertiary education, while the other
agencies had legal backing in their enabling laws to support education
one way or another.
The committee chairman said, “The way
we are looking at this intervention is that these agencies will tell
the committee what they will be able to contribute.
“Whatever is left as the balance will have to be shouldered by the Federal Government. No two ways about this.”
The lawmaker also revealed that the
contact committee would meet on Tuesday (tomorrow) and take a final
decision on the amount the agencies could contribute.
Asked whether the ongoing efforts
could make ASUU to suspend the strike, Suleiman said the union’s
leadership had proposed a meeting for Monday (today).
He added, “We have been in touch with
ASUU and they have assured us that they would meet on Monday (today)
to see whether they can convince their members to suspend the strike.
“ASUU is a democratic body; it has to
consult before taking any decision. But, the union officials have
assured us that they would meet ahead of our (committee) talks on
Tuesday (tomorrow).”
While commenting on the strike during a
meeting with commissioners of finance and accountant-generals of the
states, Okonjo-Iweala had said that the university lecturers were
asking for N92bn of extra salaries and allowances.
She claimed that the government was
still grappling with the effect of the 2010 salary increase and could
not afford to carry the additional demands by the lecturers.
But, in faulting the minister’s figure,
the union said it only asked for N87bn as part of the yet to be
implemented agreement it signed with the government in 2009.
The University of Ibadan branch
Chairman of the union, Dr. Olusegun Ajiboye, who reacted to
Okonjo-Iweala’s figure, argued that the N87bn was a compromise by ASUU,
which had initially asked for N127bn.
Ajiboye explained that the N87bn was for computed allowances of lecturers for three and a half years.
He had stated, “I want Nigerians to
ask the minister where she got her figure of N92bn from. There was never
a time that ASUU made a demand that is up to N92bn. I think the N92bn
is just the imagination of the minister.
“But, that is not to say that this government did not enter into an agreement with us.
“This is a government that signed an
agreement with us on January 24, 2012 to the effect that they would
inject N100bn as funding into the universities in the first one month
and that before the end of 2012, they would inject another N300bn.’’
No comments:
Post a Comment