Implement 2009 Nimi-Briggs committee renegotiated agreements – ASUU to Tinubu

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has advised President Bola Tinubu to implement the recommendations of the 2009 Nimi-Briggs committee’s renegotiated agreements.

The union urged Tinubu to stop being insensitive and address the central demands of public university lecturers.

ASUU in a statement on Thursday, by the Ibadan Zonal Coordinator of the union, Professor Oyebamiji Oyegoke, maintained that the federal government has not mainstreamed billions of Earned Academic Allowances owed her members.

He added that the federal government has not commenced the implementation of the Nimi-Briggs Renegotiated 2009 draft agreements.

Oyegoke noted that the deliberate pauperisation of the intelligentsia has elevated the brain drain syndrome while newly appointed lecturers are resigning for greener pastures.

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He said, “Despite the good intentions of ASUU members to make Nigerian universities globally competitive, the government has continued to unleash hardship on the lecturers as it is doing to other sectors of Nigerian state; a disposition of acting as a democratic government while pursuing IMF and World Bank anti-people policies abound and stares us in the face every day.

“Instead of doing the needful by signing and implementing the Nimi-Briggs Committee’s Renegotiated Agreement, the best of what FGN can offer is the whimsical awards of 35% and 25% to Professorial ranks and other levels by the National Wages, Salaries and Income Commission by the Buhari administration; a case of fighting the effects and not the cause of a problem

“In Federal and State universities examples abound of unpaid salaries to our members; an example is Osun State University which has not paid our members who participated in the 2020 strike action, an action whose proceeds the university benefited from and still benefiting from.

“Despite our commitments and dedication the payback for our steadfastness has been the recent, amputated one, two, or three months salaries just announced this week instead of the owed seven and half months’ salary to our members. All these come after a series of unfulfilled promises made at very high levels of governance, including that of Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu”.