Nigerian govt, ASUU agree on amicable resolution of dispute

The Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Wednesday ended their meeting with an agreement that all contentious issues will be amicably resolved to avert another strike in the universities.

The parties also agreed to kick-start a communication process to avert the planned strike by the union.

The meeting which lasted over two hours was attended by the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, the Minister of State for Education, Dr. Yusuf Sununu, and other top officials in the ministry.

The ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, who led the union’s team, told journalists after the meeting that negotiation process had begun and urged the federal government to follow up on the agreement between both parties.

He said: “We have discussions on all the issues and we have given assignment to some people to look at, and agreed on the way forward.”

On the two-week ultimatum issued by ASUU, Osodeke said they would go back and give the details of the meeting to their members.

“What is important is that we have started the process and our prayers is that we resolve it for the interest of our young men and the interest of the nation.

“The government has spent one year in office and we have not been called for any formal meeting. Today we are having the first formal meeting.

“There is a process we have started and we are going to set deadlines, we are going to meet to look at what has been done on those issues and we hope the process will continue,” the ASUU president added.

On his part, Mamman said that consultations would commence immediately to overcome the problems bedeviling education.

READ ALSO: ASUU threatens to embark on strike over withheld salaries

“We had a very good meeting and a very productive one. We have discussed progress on how to ensure that the system works well and lots of the issues we talked about are those that we inherited and some ongoing.

“We discussed them all without exception and we have consensus on the way forward.

“A lot of consultations will still continue on some information we don’t have, which are beyond the scope of the ministry and which will require us to connect with our colleagues in other ministries.

“But, the most important thing is that we had a very good meeting and agreed to continue with the consultations to overcome the problems bedeviling education in Nigeria,” the minister stated.

ASUU had a few weeks ago threatened to embark on a nationwide strike over the federal government’s failure to meet its demands.

The union gave the government two weeks to address its outstanding demands.

ASUU’s demands include the removal of the universities from Integrated Payroll and Personnel information System (IPPIS), Renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, payment of all the backlog of Earned Academic Allowance (EAA) and outstanding salaries, among others.

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