By Abdullahi Mohammed, Abuja
The federal government has so far paid over N92 billion as earned allowances and revitalisation fee to federal universities across the country, Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, has said.
The minister, who disclosed this in an interview with State House correspondents Tuesday, said this was part of the implementation of the 2020 December agreement reached with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) .He said: “Why I said that the 2020 December agreement we had with ASUU is on course in terms of implementation, is that in that agreement, there is a line that says the federal government should pay N40 billion for (Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) for ASUU and other unions, that has been paid.“N30 billion was also budgeted or was to be paid for revitalization that also was paid late last year. N22.127 billion was agreed also in that December agreement, to be paid from supplementary budget as Earned Allowances for 2021, that money was also paid last year; it was put in the supplementary budget which was passed around June-July and the money was remitted. So, the government has done that.
But ASUU has written back to NITDA to say that some of those observations were not correct,” he said.Dr Ngige said arrangements have now been concluded for the technical teams of NITDA and ASUU to meet and jointly conduct or repeat the test on the UTAS platform, so as to find a solution to the impasse.