The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has announced an eight-week extension to its ongoing strike, accusing the Nigerian government of insensitivity and spreading misinformation.
The decision was reached during a lengthy meeting of ASUU’s National Executive Council (NEC) that began on Sunday and finished early Monday morning.
The union’s national secretariat at the University of Abuja hosted the NEC meeting.
A member of the NEC who did not want to be identified in order to avoid being sanctioned by the union claimed that the ASUU leadership is now drafting a statement, which will be issued as soon as it is ready.
“Yes, we have prolonged the strike by eight weeks pending when the Nigerian government deems the university system worthy of the attention it deserves,” a source. “A statement to that effect is currently being developed. We’ll make it available as quickly as possible”, source added.
About UTAS
ASUU had issued a statement earlier on Sunday in response to the controversy surrounding the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), which its technical team developed to replace the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), which is currently used to pay its members’ salaries.
It was enraged by the assertion of Kashifu Inuwa, the director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), who declared on Wednesday at the State House that UTAS failed three integrity tests undertaken by his agency, including user acceptance, vulnerability, and stress.
“We ran all three tests with them, and the system failed all three.” We completed the reports and returned them to the minister, who transmitted them to all relevant entities, including ASUU. ASUU is now working to resolve all of the concerns we identified with the system, and we will revisit it. But that’s only half of the tale, according to Mr Inuwa.
ASUU, on the other hand, said that UTAS received 85 and 77 percent, which it described as “excellent class marks in any known grading system.”
If NITDA continues to assert that UTAS failed the integrity tests, ASUU has threatened to demand that the initial NITDA Technical Report on UTAS, in which it scored 85 percent in the User Acceptance Test (UAT), be made public.