THE Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) on Thursday threatened to shut down all Polytechnics across the country if the Federal Government fails to meet up with its demands within the next one month.

The ASUP President, Comrade Anderson Ezeibe made the threat while addressing Journalists at the end of the Union’s 102 National Executive Council meeting in Yola the Adamawa State capital where members of the Union displayed placards with various inscriptions to drive home their demands.

“Following exhaustive deliberations on the issues raised above, the 102nd of the unions National Executive Council has resolved to give the Federal Government a further one month as an ultimatum to address the outstanding issues.

“Our union’s National Executive Council shall be reconvening after the one month period which takes effect from 4th April 2022, for further decisions on this subject,” the ASUP President said.

According to him, ASUP had suspended its 61-day long industrial action on June 10, 2021, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the government.

But due to the failure of the government to meet their demands, the union said it is set to resume the suspended industrial strike action but will reconvene in a month’s time to make that decision.

Items under the union’s demands include; the non-release of the revitalisation funds for the sector, non-release of arrears of the new minimum wage, and non-release of the reviewed nomination instruments for institutions and Managements as well as programmes accreditation among others.

In the same vein, ”ASUU will be so foolish if they don’t shut down the Universities. APC school feeding programme cost Nigerian government 228billion while the education budget is 109billion. You will know the intentions of thieves even from foolish allocations of public resources.” Says Ben Nwabueze.