ASUU: FG Has Paid N92 Billion To ASUU, Ngige Tells President Buhari

Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige has updated President Buhari on the progress of the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

 The union has since February 14 embarked on a one-month strike to reiterate their N1.2 trillion demand and the adoption of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) payment medium by her Federal Government.

At the end of his meeting with President Buhari, Minister Ngige informed the State House journalists that the Federal Government had paid over N92 billion as a retaliation fee and earned allowances to Federal Government-owned universities as part of its 2020 agreement with the union.

"Why I said that the 2020 December agreement we had with ASUU is on course in terms of implementation. There is a line that says the federal government should pay N40 billion for (Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) for ASUU and other unions, that have 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.”

Speaking on the introduction of UTAS payment mediums as ASUU's choice, the minister assured the revisit of the matter.

“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.

“But ASUU has written back to NITDA to say that some of those observations were not correct,” Ngige explained.

He however said the technical teams of ASUU and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) would converge to repeat the test on the medium, thereby finding a solution to the issue.