The national leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, and a team from the Federal Government will meet later this week to try to avoid a new round of university lecturers going on strike.
The government team, which will comprise officials from the Education and Labor Ministries, ministers, and leaders of certain important government agencies, will convey the meeting date to ASUU leadership during the week.
Dr. Adelaja Odukoya, the Chairman of ASUU’s Lagos Zone, said yesterday that the meeting would take place this week, based on guarantees from the government.
“As a union, we are not opposed to negotiation and amicable resolution of issues. In this case, we are awaiting the government team to call us for the meeting. They said it’s going to be this week, we are waiting. They have not given us the date but we are waiting.
“There is no doubt that we have given the government enough time to meet our demands and do the needful. We met with them on August 2, this year, and following the meeting, we gave them till the end of August to do certain things.
”The deadline lapsed and up until now, none of the demands has been met. We have given them more than enough time.
“Let us be hopeful that they would do the needful this time around. But people can see that ASUU has been reasonable and considerate enough,” he said.
Recall that when the union’s nine-month strike ended on December 23, last year, one of the union’s expectations was that the N40 billion revitalization fund pledged to government-owned universities, as well as Earned Academic Allowances, would be paid.
The government, on the other hand, is blaming the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) bureaucracy for the delay in the payment of the grant, a claim that ASUU has continually refuted.
Ada Peter
