No fewer than three committees were set up within the period of two years to look into the lingering crisis in the university system, analysis by The PUNCH revealed.
The period under review is between 2021 and 2022.
The PUNCH reports that the Academic Staff Union of Universities which is the umbrella body of academic staff in Nigerian universities has always been at loggerheads with the federal government.
The union is currently on strike over what it tagged as the failure of the government to meet some lingering demands.
Some of the demands include the release of revitalization fund for universities; release of earned allowances for university lecturers, deployment of the University Transparency Accountability System for the payment of salaries and allowances of university lecturers; an end to the proliferation of universities by government; renegotiation of the ASUU-FGN 2009 agreement among others.
The PUNCH reports that in 2020, ASUU embarked on a nine-month strike, the strike which was called off in December 2020 led to the inauguration of a federal government committee led by Prof. Munzali Jubril. In 2021, the Munzali Committee working with ASUU came up with recommendations in a draft agreement.
ASUU was given a timeline as to how to get the government to sign the agreement but the timeline was not kept. This compelled ASUU to embark on another strike to get the federal government to sign the agreement.
During the height of the strike in March 2022, the federal government inaugurated the Nimi Briggs Committee to renegotiate the renegotiated agreement.
ASUU entered into the renegotiation of a renegotiated agreement with the federal government constituted Nimi Briggs Committee. On the 16th of June, 2022, the Nimi Briggs Committee submitted a draft agreement that was a product of Collective Bargaining to the government.
But the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, while briefing vice-chancellors and other stakeholders in Abuja noted that the government discarded the Nimi-Briggs committee because of a lack of adequate resources.
On Tuesday, September 6, 2022, the government once again set up another committee which will be chaired by Adamu himself.
