Education

ASUU strike: Ngige meets Buhari, says N92bn paid to lecturers

Published

3 years ago

March 1, 2022

Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, met President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday, for a briefing on the Federal Government-Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) negotiation..

ASUU commenced strike on February 14 to pressurize the government for the payment of outstanding N1.2trillion.

The lecturers are also demanding the adoption of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) payment platform.

Ngige told State House correspondents that N92billion has been paid as earned allowances and revitalisation fees.

Recalling the December 2020 agreement reached with ASUU, the minister said the government has fulfilled N40 billion for Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) for ASUU and other unions.

“N30billion was also budgeted for revitalization that also was paid late last year.

“N22.127billion was agreed to be paid from supplementary budget as Earned Allowances for 2021. That money was also paid last year.”

Ngige reacted to ASUU’s preference for UTAS instead of government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

He confirmed that UTAS developed by universities has been subjected to test by the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

“In their report, they pointed out the areas of lapses which will not make it usable as presently configured.

“ASUU wrote back to NITDA to say that some of those observations were not correct”, Ngige said.

The official disclosed that technical teams of NITDA and ASUU would soon meet to jointly test UTAS.