Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, says it is ready to embark on another fresh round of industrial action following what it described as the failure of the Federal Government to implement earlier  agreement signed with the union.

The union said it was giving the government till tomorrow, Tuesday, August 31, 2021, to reach out or it will begin the processes for embarking on strike.
National President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, spoke in an interview with reporters on Sunday, noting that the government no longer picked its calls.
ASUU embarked on had on March 2020, embarked on a prolonged strike following its disagreement with the Federal Government over the funding of the universities as well as the ineffectiveness and discrepancies around the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, IPPIS,  among other burning issues.

The union later, developed the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS,  to replace IPPIS and has had several meetings with the Ministries of Finance, Education, Labour and Employment, and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation before it was approved but yet to be implemented.
Also, the Federal Government, FG, and ASUU signed an agreement aimed at resolving some of the demands of ASUU, a development that led to the suspension of the strike on December 24, 2020, about 10 months into the strike.
Furthermore, after a meeting with the FG officials on August 2, 2021, Osodeke said the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency insisted that UTAS must be re-presented to the end users.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, also assured ASUU on the occasion, that the N22 billion earned allowance captured in the 2021 supplementary budget would soon be paid to the university workers.
But speaking, Osodeke said  that the Federal Government  had not only stopped reaching out to ASUU but failed to implement the agreement reached.
His words, “The government has refused to reach out to us. Government officials have stopped, in fact, they don’t take our calls again. Nigerians should tell the government to do what they agreed to do.
“We signed an agreement and even in May, we reached a final agreement; this is August and nothing has been implemented. Does it make any sense? We are giving them till the end of August and after that, we start the procedures.”