Strike: No Resumption Until UTAS Is Deployed In Varsities – ASUU

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Abuja zone, has said that the ongoing nationwide strike by its members, will continue until the renegotiated 2009 Agreement is signed and implemented and University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) platform is deployed in public universities.

ASUU had announced a two-month extension of its initial four-week warning strike in March over government’s failure to satisfactorily implement the draft renegotiated 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement and deploy for use in the Nigerian University system the homegrown payment and personnel solution called UTAS, among other issues.

Addressing journalists in Abuja on Monday, the zonal coordinator of the zone, Dr. Salahu Mohammed Lawal, said its members were ever ready to return to their duty posts as soon as their demands are met by the federal government.

He urged Nigerian parents with children in public universities to call the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy and the director general of NITDA to order in this respect and also urged the federal government to expedite action on the deployment of UTAS.

Lawal said, “Our great Union is famous for saying it as it is; here we place for the record what transpired between NITDA and the UTAS team. Following the discontent that greeted the NITDA’s verdict on UTAS in 2021, the retest was to be observed by the Federal Ministry of Education; National Universities Commission: Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning: OAGF: Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment: and the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission.

“The reassessment was conducted between Tuesday 8th – Friday 18th March, 2022 at the Corporate headquarters of NITDA using three agreed frames of Test Plan, Security Test Plan and Test Cases. NITDA conducted the Integrity Test at the end of which UTAS was scored an initial 93.7%, the Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Test was equally carried out using an automated Burp Suite. This recognised seven high risk items that were made available to the ASUU technical team.

“These were completely addressed immediately after the restoration of a Whitelist that was earlier deactivated to allow NITDA unfettered access to carry out their test. Over all, the assessment of 698 test cases saw UTAS scoring 99.3%. Where in the world does this equate to a failure as claimed by the DG of NITDA, Mr Kashifu recently?

“Sequel to the remediation of the seven threats identified by the automated burp suite, NITDA requested that they be allowed to manually carry out the test after which the two parties would sign the final result sheet.

“It was at this point the DG NITDA phoned in to get situation report and proceeded to address the media with the sensational lie “UTAS has failed the test”. Declaring otherwise would amount to issuing a love letter to ASUU and a death sentence to his principal who had vowed to ensure the universities remained close for as long as it pleased them.

“You would recall that this incident had happened before when the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Malam Isa Pantami flanked by his apprentice, the DG NITDA appeared before the Federal Executive Council on March 9th, 2022, with similar odious lies about UTAS.

“This deceit occurred the second day of testing. In more decent societies these two personalities would have been made to stand trial for perjury and an intent to sabotage efforts being made by well meaning Nigerians to end the impasse since the strike was declared,” he stated.