₦airaland Forum

Good news

Well deserved

The bigger godfather

This Hisba has no regards for people's right

Alright. Lovely

A good call

Welcome to the throne

Investigation has revealed that both the federal and state governments which are proprietors of public universities in Nigeria may have lost a huge sum of N1.5 trillion to the incessant strikes embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) since the nation’s return to democracy in 1999.

Nigerian universities have also lost four and a half study years in the last 20 years to strike actions by the university lecturers with students adversely affected any time such strike occurred, which stakeholders have observed was responsible for the distortion of academic calendar in the nation’s university system.

According to data compiled from various sources in the course of the investigation by Nigerian Tribune, the figure above represents the salaries paid to staff in the university system for a cumulative period of about four and half years during which ASUU went on strike in the last two decades.

ASUU had embarked on the current indefinite strike since March 9, 2020 and had gone on strike in each year in the last 21 years with rare exception of 2014 and 2015 when the university lecturers did not go on strike, the data indicated.

President of ASUU, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, had declared the ongoing strike following the withholding of salaries of lecturers by the Federal Government over refusal to enroll on the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), which government directed that all university staff must be enrolled.

While declaring the current strike action, Ogunyemi had noted that though the country was under lockdown occasioned by COVID-19, the lecturers would withhold their services since the Federal Government has decided to use the weapon of hunger to fight its members.

He had also listed other demands of the union to include renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, payment of backlog of earned academic allowance, release university revitalisation fund, and of course, attempt to force lecturers to enroll on IPPIS, which ASUU insisted its University Transparency and Accountability (UTAS) developed as an alternative would better serve the university system because its peculiarities.

Further checks revealed that the academic staff in all of the nation’s public universities went on a strike for a total of 19 times with a cumulative period of about 1,461 days.

An analysis of the timelines of strikes by universities in Nigeria showed that the ongoing strike, which started on March 9, with a two-week warning and the indefinite strike, which commenced on March 29 is the longest in the history of ASUU strikes as it has lasted for about 204 days as at October 4 and still counting.

Before then, the strike in 2003 which snowballed into 2004 was the longest as it lasted 180 days, the analysis showed.

It was also observed that some of the strikes dovetailed into a new year like in 2003, which ended in 2004 and 2011, which also ended in 2012.

Nigerian Tribune investigation showed that the over N1.5 trillion lost by the federal and state governments represented total emoluments paid to the staff during the period the strikes lasted, obviously for work not done, as the Federal Government never invoked the provisions of the extant Act on “no work, no pay”.

The amount covered the payment of staff in 43 federal and 47 state universities, where the workers are unionised.

However, the staff of the nation’s 78 private universities are mostly not unionised and have not been part of the numerous ASUU strikes, investigation showed.

The latest available data on payment of salaries in Nigerian Universities obtained from the National Universities Commission (NUC) Statistical Digest 2018 released in April 2019 showed that the federal and state governments committed a total of N308.5 billion (N308, 526,701, 478.39) to payment of salaries.

The figure did not even include Rivers State University, University of Ilorin, University of Jos and Yobe State University, which for undisclosed reasons were not covered in the statistical computation released by NUC.

The amount lost to the strikes was arrived at after Nigerian Tribune used the annual payment of N308.5 billion as an average and multiplied by about four and half years of strikes by the university lecturers.

Data obtained from NUC and office of the Accountant General of the Federation showed that the least paid university lecturer earns N1,979,640 as basic salary per annum, while a Senior Lecturer earns about N3,091,505.

Similarly, a Reader or Associate Professor earns at least N3,768,221 per annum while a full Professor earns N5,004,750 per annum. It was found out that the Federal and state universities had a total of about 51,000 academic staff in 2017 but the figure may have risen to at least 61,000 in 2020 even though NUC statistical data is yet to formally report on the number of staff in the universities in the years after 2017.

While ASUU and some stakeholders blamed the incessant strikes on the Federal Government for always reneging on agreements reached with the Union, others have criticised ASUU for frequent industrial actions, urging the lecturers to explore more appropriate ways of engaging with the Federal Government in resolution of dispute.

On the positive note, the strikes in the past led to the creation of Education Trust Fund (ETF), now Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), as a sustainable way of funding tertiary education in the country.

When the ASUU, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi was called on Sunday for his position, he could not respond to the several calls, but in his earlier response to an online platform, The Cable CamPulse, he justified the numerous strikes by university lecturers as he said the strike action had helped the educational sector.

“You need to look so far over years what the strike has achieved for the Nigerian education sector and compare it to what is happening in other sub-sectors of the educational system.

If not for ASUU, the public universities, in fact, public tertiary education would have collapsed totally beyond recovery.

“So you can best appreciate that when you compare and contrast what is happening as a result of ASUU struggle and what is not happening as a result of lack of struggle at the level of primary and secondary education of the country,” he told an online news platform, The Cable CamPulse.

The President said Nigerians should appreciate the lecturers for the strikes.

“They are not concerned with the plight of the poor. All you see now is how to fit their children into positions of advantage to the disadvantage of the children of the poor,” he said.

“The best way to do it is to ensure that their children receive the best of education while the children of the poor are subjected to substandard and low-quality education.

“NUT cannot do what ASUU is doing now because the government will seize their salary, they have underpaid them; they have not given them the right to ventilate their anger. And because of that, they have become disillusioned in places where they are working.

“You will even see primary school teachers who cannot still take their own children to the school they are teaching. I’m saying these just to illustrate the fact that public primary and public secondary education system have collapsed. If not for ASUU, the same would have happened to universities.

“So Nigerians should actually be thanking ASUU, for the wake-up calls we always give the Nigerian government.

“And let me tell you as far back as 1992, each time we went for an action, we refer government to inject funds so that public universities will not go on the same

place with primary and secondary schools. In 1992, it’s as a result of ASUU struggle that the government introduced TETFUND.

“TETFUND today is the only source of providing infrastructural amenities in Nigerian Universities. So people who are ignorant are the ones saying we are destroying calendar,” he told The Cable CamPulse.

https://tribuneonlineng.com/how-fg-states-lost-n1-5-trillion-to-ASUU-strikes-investigation/

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the federal government is working on providing more palliatives to relive the pains of the COVID-19 pandemic on citizens. According to a statement by his spokesman, Laolu Akande, in Abuja on Monday, Osinbajo gave the assurance in a chat with correspondents on Sunday.

The Vice President also reassured that President Muhammadu Buhari understands the pains and burdens Nigerians are going through because of the economic aftermath of the pandemic “and that is why the Federal Government is considering palliatives that can offer succour to the people.”

The statement quoted Osinbajo as saying: “We fully understand that we must have a way of ensuring that the pain that people feel, the economic difficulty that people are going through, that we are able to address those as much as possible.

“Which is why even in our current discussions with labour, one of the issues we are looking at include what sort of palliatives are possible for the Nigerian people. In what ways can we reduce the burden and how quickly can we do so?” Giving further insights to government’s plan for the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), Prof. Osinbajo said “one of those issues we have looked at is how to reduce the cost of gas and petrol. How do we ensure that people are able to go about their businesses buying cheaper energy?”

The Vice President explained that “one of the ways is by using Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). And the government has committed to do the conversion. First of all, we are starting with commercial vehicles. Most commercial transporters will have the capacity to use both gas and petrol. That is already being done, experimentally in Edo State. Dangote, for instance, has converted all his trucks to the use of CNG, and that is 4000 or even more of those trucks. It is not a particularly difficult thing to do for the commercial transporters, it may be expensive for the individual but that is also part of the commitment of government, to be able to do the conversion, and the price of gas comes at about almost half the price of petrol.”

The Vice President also noted that “there are other creative ways that we are involved in at the moment, in reducing the burden on Nigerians, because we all accept that nobody expected a downturn in the economic fortunes of the country occasioned by the fallouts of COVID-19 pandemic.

“We had 12 consecutive quarters of growth before the pandemic, we were all expecting that 2020 will be the best year, since the beginning of the administration, but here we are, faced with challenges, global challenges, we also have our own peculiar problems.

‘But the important thing is that the President and the government are committed completely in ensuring that Nigerians do not suffer needlessly and in whatever way it is possible, we will reduce the burden on Nigerians.”

https://tribuneonlineng.com/fg-planning-more-covid-19-palliatives-for-nigerians-%e2%80%95-osinbajo/

I wish them a quick recovery

akpunda86:
Pls is this still available i mean newer versions.
I miss james hardley chase and Agatha Christie.

When reading was fun

Check here for James Hardley Chase eNovels free download
https://paddy.bitrix24.site/free-tools

OK, boys. Let's do it again. No drawback, no stopping.

You always know a great leader when you see one. No hiding in one unknown location, unlike what we witness here.

Nigeria, a country where more than half of its annual budget always ends up in leaders' personal accounts for personal interest. Why will the country not be in huge debt?

This thing is getting more serious than I thought.

What a calamity.

Alat as a digital bank is a noble idea, but it's equally affected by our failed system. I can't remember when last I could carry out any successful online purchase with Alat card due to inability to receive OTP. I've reported the issue to the customer service, but no solution. Abeg there are more important things to worry about than another system that is struggling to stay afloat.

Who knows if God was only trying to stop the desaster that would have befallen him in Borno. Instead of him to go home to his family, and thank God, he's here fuming.

The Federal Government says the comparison made by President Muhammadu Buhari on fuel prices between Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and other countries in his 2020 Independence Day national broadcast is justified.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, made the submission when he featured on a Radio Nigeria current affairs programme, “Radio Link’’ on Saturday in Abuja.

President Buhari said in his Independence Day broadcast that: “we sell petrol at N161 per litre when same is sold at N168 per litre in Saudi Arabia; N211 per litre in Egypt; N362 per litre in Ghana; N362 per litre in Chad, and N346 per litre in Niger Republic.
“It does not make sense for petrol to be cheaper in Nigeria than Saudi Arabia.’’
A cross-section of Nigerians, however, criticised the president for making such comparison without considering the minimum wage, standard of living and infrastructure in Saudi Arabia in particular.

Responding to the critics, the minister said there was nothing wrong in making such a comparison.
“Some people have said that why should we compare ourselves to Saudi Arabia with better infrastructure and higher wages. Our answer to that is very simple. Saudi Arabia has 34 million people while Nigeria has 200 million people. Saudi Arabia produces 10 million barrels of crude oil per day, while Nigeria produces at its best, 2.1 million barrel per day."

“Their population is about one-sixth of Nigeria’s population and they are blessed with more resources.
Therefore, they can afford to pay higher wages and build infrastructure. Our argument must be put in proper perspective."

“As we have said, whatever money we make from the subsidy removal, we will invest in infrastructure development’’ he said.

The minister commended organised labour for its understanding and patriotism in suspending its planned strike to protest the fuel price deregulation and the electricity tariff adjustment. He noted that the suspension of the strike by the Nigeria Labour Congress, the Trade Union Congress and their affiliates, averted a “national calamity’’. Alhaji Mohammed said after spending sleepless nights engaging with organised labour, the two congresses agreed with the government that the fuel deregulation was inevitable

“The moment we lost as much as 60 per cent of our earnings and suffered a kind of shock in crude oil prices, we must deregulated. Between 2006 and 2019 we paid N10.413 trillion in fuel subsidies; an average of N743.8 billion per annum,’’ he lamented. The country right now cannot afford the subsidy regime,’’ the minister stressed.

He said the government agreed with labour that it would facilitate the setting up of many modular refineries and rehabilitate existing regular refineries to cushion the effect of the deregulation. He said the Ministry of Petroleum Resources would intensify efforts to ensure that Nigerians could get alternatives such as gas to power their vehicles and machinery. Alhaji Mohammed said that the first autogas station would be inaugurated and opened to public next week in Lagos.

On electricity tariff adjustment, the minister explained that the government agreed with labour to establish a joint committee to investigate and confirm that the price increase did not affect vulnerable Nigerians. He said the committee would specifically ascertain and ensure that the price increase did not affect Nigerians who get less than 12 hours of electricity per day. Alhaji Mohammed said the government would provide five million households with solar power in the next 12 months.

He said the solar energy programme would benefit at least 25 million people and would create about 250,000 jobs. The minister said the government was also working toward providing other palliatives to cushion the effect of the tariff adjustment and fuel price deregulation.

https://tribuneonlineng.com/why-nigeria-cannot-sell-petrol-lower-than-saudi-arabia-egypt-others-%e2%80%95-lai-mohammed/

Wish her success

This is what you have in a country with low rate of corruption. Not in a country like Nigeria where leaders are ''fighting" corruption with the left hands, while looting the treasury with the right.

Go for further studies ASAP

Don't worry,.Continue with the strike. Covid-19 lock down is over. Now, no work, no pay.