The Federal Government maintained on Thursday that it will not agree to the demand by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) that their members be paid the backlog of salaries withheld over the ongoing strike.

It said this is meant to be the penalty for their needless action. 

The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, stated this while appearing on the ministerial media briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Thursday.

He insisted that not paying the backlog of salary will deter others who may consider strike in future. 

He said the strike by the university-based unions came despite the trillions of naira expended on education by the present administration directly, as well as by agencies such as TEFFUND and UBEC.

Adamu stated that five of the university-based unions will likely call off their strike within the next one week while that of ASUU is not certain.

He, however, noted that ASUU had begun consultations with their members to determine whether to call off their strike as well.

Adamu also said that the University Perculiar Personnel and Payroll System (U3PS) and the the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) outscored the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System  (IPPIS) during the integrity tests conducted, affirming that ASUU’s peculiarities will be accommodated in whatever platform that may me adopted.

It would be recalled that the truce meet­ing called between the Educa­tion Minister and ASUU few days ago ended in a deadlock owing to differences in some of the demands raised.

While ASUU had insisted that one of the conditions for suspending the over six months’ strike is for govern­ment to pay their emoluments for the six months period they have been out of classes, the Nimi Briggs led committee on behalf of the Federal Gov­ernment refused to concede to such demand.

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