THE Federal Government says it would pay the sum of N22.172 billion earned allowances to all workers in the universities on or before October 30, 2021.
It assured that the amount had been provided for in the 2021 Supplementary Budget.
Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, disclosed this Thursday in his office after a marathon conciliation meeting between the federal government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The meeting was convened by the minister to evaluate the level of implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by both parties in December last year and the resolutions of the follow up meeting held on August 2 this year.
Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Ngige said they held fruitful deliberations, stressing that the six issues on the agenda were satisfactorily addressed.
He assured that the government was not dragging its feet on anything that would make the university system to be good, adding that they were desirous that public universities should be fit and proper places for learning and research.
In a statement signed by his Deputy Director Press and Public Relations, Charles Akpan, the minister reaffirmed the commitment of the government to uplifting the standard of Nigerian universities. He stressed that the Buhari administration would try as much as possible within its limited resources, to make meaningful contributions to the development of the university system.
On the issue of revitalisation funds for public universities, the minister said the meeting received an update from the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Federal Ministry of Education and they were happy that the assignment given to them had been done satisfactorily.
According to him, the NUC and the Federal Ministry of Education did their assignment in terms of getting the universities to come and defend the various allocations given to them based on the needs of the universities.
“A committee to monitor has also been sent up by NUC. We are happy about that and expect the disbursement of the revitalisation funds to commence very soon,” he said.
Ngige said the meeting was equally satisfied with the work that the NUC had done, having compartmentalised the payments based on the universities and the existing unions.
He said the sum of N22.172 billion was provided in the 2021 Supplementary Budget for Earned Allowances to all workers in the universities.
He expressed optimism that the payments to the individual universities would commence very soon, as the meeting set a timeline for the payment to begin on or before October 30, 2021.
He revealed that they received the report from the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) on the preferred payment platform of ASUU, known as the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) system.
“We are also happy with the report they gave. We asked them to liaise with ASUU and NUC to work on this system for deployment by the users as soon as possible,” he said.
