The Academic Staff Union Of Universities ASUU Bauchi Zone today in the University of Jos ASUU secretariat gives condition for a possibility of school resumption. ViewpointNigeria also gathered the chairperson’s constituting Bauchi zone are in the university of Jos for a zonal meeting.

In a press statement titled “REOPENING OF UNIVERSITIES: COVID-19 OR ASUU STRUGGLE? ASUU says, “The attention of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Bauchi Zone, has been drawn to agitations on the reopening Universities by stakeholders, amidst prevailing and unresolved COVID-19 and ASUU Strike issues; some of the stakeholders have even blamed ASUU for the inability of the Federal Government to announce the reopening”

ASUU Bauchi zone enumerated a number of issues between the Union and the Federal Government to include: implement the February 7th, 2019 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA), and by extension the 2017 MoA, the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the 2011 MoU and the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, aimed at saving the Nigerian Public University System, and the abandonment of the forceful implementation of IPPIS which is full of anomalies and inconsistent with extant University Laws.

ASUU added that the “(i) Federal Government shall provide funds for the revitalisation of Public Universities in the following manner in the next six years (beginning with 2013):

ii) A dedicated revitalisation account shall be opened at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) by Federal Government. Funds shall be paid into it [sic] on a quarterly basis from which the Universities would draw. Federal Government shall ensure that these funds are ring-fenced.
iii) That a Central Monitoring Committee (Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC) of NEEDS Assessment) shall be established to monitor the implementation of the revitalisation of the Public Universities and shall submit quarterly report to the Minister of Education

added ASUU ” In the MoA of February 7th 2019, the Government reaffirmed its commitment to the implementation of the 2013 MoU which would be shown by the release of N25b in the period April/May 2019 and subsequent resumption of full implementation of the MoU after the activation of the recommendations of the Report of the Stakeholders Workshop on Sustainable Funding for Education in Nigeria, 27th – 28th November 2018.
Has Government lived up to the above commitments?
The other pending issues are:
b. Payment of the arrears of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) up to 2018 in four equal instalments and the mainstreaming of further payments into the annual Budgets beginning from 2019
c. State Universities; where a Consultative Committee is to address the issue of proliferation, underfunding and unnecessary interference in governance by State Governments,
d. Reconstitution of Visitation Panels to Federal Universities fixed for 11th March, 2019, and
e. Reconstitution of Government Renegotiation Team, and the commencement and conclusion of such Renegotiation within six weeks (18th February to 31st March, 2019
2.2 Forceful implementation of IPPIS in the Universities
ASUU had resisted and will continue to resist IPPIS in the Nigerian Public Universities, citing a number of reasons. Apart from being inconsistent with the University Laws, IPPIS has a number of deployment and implementation challenges in the Nigerian Universities. It is a foreign oriented policy with clandestine objectives: good objectives are being achieved by the existing internal mechanisms, with the University Councils in control, and the National University Commission (NUC) harmonising University Standards in line with International Standards and Global Best Practices.
Apart from the ills of IPPIS we have enumerated in previous engagements with the Press, new trend in the desperate attempts of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) to implement IPPIS in the Universities

ASUU lastly, maintains that our approach to the reopening of Universities amidst COVID-19 had existed in the 2013 FGN/ASUU MoU. This had already been affirmed by the Minister of Education in 2017 when he started advocating for the “State of Emergency in Education.” With the way Government is handling issues of funding Universities, it will take us more than ten (10) years before Government would put the necessary facilities to comply with the COVID-19 Protocols as stipulated by WHO, NCDC, PTF and States’ COVID-19 Control Committees.
Governments in Nigeria seem to believe that the solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic do not exist in the Universities.

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REOPENING OF UNIVERSITIES: ASUU Gives condition