Nigeria’s young musician, by name Divine Ikubor but known by his stage name as Rema, has complained crying out that the protracted strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has made it impossible for him to set his eyes on school since he gained admission into the university and then urged the union to call off the industrial action.
Rema, reportedly, made this complaint via his verified Twitter handle on Monday, saying, “ASUU since dem give me admission I neva start school o, e don do nau!”.
The popular musician made an announcement in January 2022, that he had gained admission into the university.
But in February, ASUU announced the commencement of a four-week strike following the inability of the union and the Federal Government to reach common ground on the demands of university lecturers.
Some of ASUU’s demands include the release of revitalization funds for universities, renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, release of earned allowances for university lecturers, and deployment of the UTAS payment platform for the payment of salaries and allowances of university lecturers.
However, the Federal Government has said that it is not opposed to renegotiations of the conditions of service of all workers in the public universities across the country.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige stated this last Monday while receiving members of the government side of the 2009 Federal Government/University-based unions agreement re-negotiation committee led by the Chairman, Prof. Nimi Briggs.
Ngige said as the conciliator, he has been pushing to see that everything contained in the 2020 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the government and the union was done, including the implementation of the renegotiated positions.
The musician rose to stardom with the release of the song “Iron Man”, which appeared on Barack Obama’s 2019 summer playlist.
In 2019, he signed a record deal with Jonzing World, a subsidiary of Mavin Records.
