LECTURERS, on Wednesday, faulted the claim of Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, that they were demanding for N92 billion from the Federal Government.
Under the aegis of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), they said the money demanded was just N87 billion.
The Minister was on Tuesday reported as saying that the Federal Government could not meet the N92 billion allowances being demanded by ASUU, but the University of Ibadan Chairman of ASUU, Dr Olusegun Ajiboye, described the quoted amount as a concocted falsehood and a figment of the minister’s imagination.
Said Ajiboye: “The earned allowances jointly calculated with the Federal Government and ASUU in the 2009 agreement was N87 billion and it covers allowances for three and half years for thousands of lecturers in Nigerians universities”.
According to him, the N87 billion was a compromise made by ASUU when it scaled it down from the initial N127 billion.
Claiming that the N87 billion was computed based on 15 per cent of the annual recurrent expenditures of some Nigerian universities, Ajiboye said: “I want Nigerians to ask the minister where she got her figure of N92 billion from. There was never a time that ASUU made a demand that was up to N92 billion. I think the N92 billion is just the imagination of the Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy. But that is not to say that this government did not enter into an agreement with us.
“This is a government that signed an agreement with us on January 24, 2012 to the effect that they will inject N100 billion as funding into the universities in the first one month, and that before the end of 2012, they will inject another N300 billion. The same government did not put down a kobo to any of these universities,” he said.
