The Federal Government has said it will not negotiate withe the Academic Staff University Union (ASUU) at gunpoint.
The government said the Union has to call off its strike before negotiation can begin.
The Federal Ministry of Education therefore urged ASUU to call off its strike “so that we will not have gunpoint negotiations and make promises that we will not be able to fulfil.”
The ministry’s spokesman, Ben Goong, made this known in an interview with newsmen on Sunday.
Meanwhile, National President, ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke, confirmed that the NEC of the Union held a meeting, and would make their next stand known on Monday.
“The NEC is meeting and details will be communicated,” the ASUU president simply said.
However, ASUU, in a statement on Sunday, accused Inuwa of deliberately misinforming the public and invited the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, as well as the NITDA boss to a public debate over the integrity of UTAS.
The statement by Osodeke, read in part, “The one-month roll-over strike by our union on February 14, 2022, has entered its fourth week. During this period, we have been having engagements with the government over the contending issues that necessitated the action. One of the contending issues is the deployment of the UTAS, which is a robust software created by the ASUU technical group to manage personnel and payroll in the university system.
“The Federal Government had referred UTAS to NITDA to conduct user acceptance test and vulnerability test assessment and penetration test prior to the final deployment. The process, which commenced on Thursday, March 3, is still ongoing.
“This press statement is necessitated by the need for ASUU to put the records straight on the grounds already covered in our patriotic struggle to get the government to deploy UTAS as a suitable solution for salary payment.
“Of special concern is the statement credited to both the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy and the Director-General of NITDA to the effect that UTAS had failed the integrity test. Let us put it on record that an integrity test was carried out by NITDA on August 10, 2021, in the NUC, where relevant government agencies and all the end-users in the university system were present.”
