Contrary to what the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu has made the public to believe concerning the lingering ASUU strike, FG has not met the demands of ASUU. What they did was to offer promissory notes to ASUU, same promises that they keep giving each time ASUU embarks on strike.

These are the promises:

1. Promise to release revitalisation fund of 170b and to be included in 2023 budget

2. Promise of Earned allowance of 50b For all the university based unions and to be included in 2023 budget

3. Promise of 30k salary increment for lecturers and 60k for professors and to be included in 2023 budget still. ASUU sees this particular offer as miserable and insulting. What happens to the draft of renegotiated agreement submitted to FG two months ago.

4. UTAS performed well in the test and MAY be deployed.

Nothing was said about the draft of the just concluded renegotiation between the Brigg's committee and ASUU.

To those who may want to know, these are same promises FG has been making year after year without fulfilling any and there are no indications that they have changed. So ASUU rejected this offer. However, FG came to the public to paint a picture that looks as if ASUU has accepted all their offers but insisted on payment of arrears of salary before calling off the strike. This is a lie. FG promissory offer was not accepted by ASUU, it's not just about arrears of salaries that has flooded the social media.

If I may comment on the withheld salaries, there is nothing to worry about. If the govt is not willing to pay the backlog of salaries, then the backlog of work will be skipped and the school calendar continues at the normal pace. That means lecturers will not resume from where they stopped before the strike. All pending lectures, exams and marking of scripts, practicals, projects, etc that were supposed to take place during the strike period will be forgotten. Lecturers will skip whatever was left and resume a fresh session. The issue of ending a semester this week and resuming a fresh semester next week in order to recover lost grounds will never arise. The issue of sacrificing holidays in order to meet up and graduate students will not arise because no backlog of work will be undertaken, since the period when that work was supposed to be done is a period of no work no pay. Another implication is that the set of JAMBites with Jamb admissions waiting to resume will forfeit the admission and write another Jamb, because that particular admission has become stale, since govt will not pay for the period lost to strike.

In essence what everyone should know is that all the works lecturers were supposed to do during the strike would still be done to the later whenever the strike is suspended, but if withheld salaries will not be paid, then such backlog of works will be skipped. Therefore it is not withheld salaries that is holding the strike, rather, it is the failure of govt to address the issues that led to the strike.

Dr Kufre Udo.

Expect such when the government is led by APC

Nothing positive