The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has accused the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, of deception by asking the union to call off its eight-month-old strike in October with a written promise that the government would, without delay, offset in full the arrears of salaries members were owed.
The president of the union, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, gave this position on Tuesday in an exclusive interview with Tribune Online, when he was asked to reflect on the speaker’s intervention and then vice versa on the current situation of their issues with the federal government.
He said ASUU had a soft spot for the speaker, and that was why the union engaged him in a discussion as a welcome intervention to resolve the stalemate between it and the federal government.
He said Gbajabiamila even presented a paper signed by him to the ASUU leadership, indicating the seriousness of the government’s commitment to pay in full the eight-month salaries its members were owed and also urgently attend to some other matters and specifying how to address them.
He said part of these concerns were the peculiarities in the controversial Universities Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) and the involvement of the house committee on budget allocation, among others.
