Strike: ASUU, FG Meet On Thursday

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says it is ready
to commence negotiations with the Federal Government to resolve the
ongoing strike.

ASUU President, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, disclosed this to newsmen
on Wednesday in Abuja.

Ogunyemi said that meeting with the Federal Government
delegation has been scheduled for Thursday, one o’clock at the
instance of the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu.

According to him, the N200 billion released by the Federal
Government in September 2018 is not an issue but that N200 billion
ought to have been released in October 2017 as part of the 2013
agreement.

“It would be recalled that the Federal Government had agreed to
inject N1.3 trillion to fund universities at N 220 billion yearly
for five years.

“If the government fails to fund public universities the
situation on campuses may degenerate, worse than the already poor
quality teaching and learning environment,’’ he said.

The ASUU president, however, insisted that the ‘No work no pay’
threats by the government would not affect the lecturers as the
industrial action was legal in Nigerian labour law and
international conventions, which Nigeria is signatory.

He added that ASUU is hoping that the meeting scheduled for
Thursday will be used to resolve the issues at stake and not to
continue to raise the alarm that past administrations made bogus
agreements with the university lecturers.

The striking lecturers had resumed its strike on November 5 to
press home its demands.

Some of the demands are: that the Federal Government should
nominate another chairman of the government renegotiating team of
the 2009 ASUU/Federal Government Agreement.

ASUU had rejected Dr Wale Babalakin led renegotiating team.

Other demands are: non-payment of Earned allowance, funding of
revitalization of the Nigerian universities, implementation of
needs assessment report, poor funding of state universities, among
others.