ASUU Strike: FG, ASUU Meeting Continues Next Week...

Nigerian Minister of Education

After their three-hour closed-door meeting held at the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation yesterday, the two parties arrived to a nearly conclusive end in the negotiation as five out their seven prayers have been answered.

The Chairman, University Needs Implementation Committee, Gabriel Suswam said, “we agreed on all major issues except the issues of funding of the Universities or rather intervention and then the allowance of the University Lecturers. We believe that by next week the other issues would be resolved. Then, ASUU would probably call off the strike.”  “We are involving all the agencies that fund the universities - the CBN and all others. As soon as the two issues are resolved, we believe that the strike would be called off."   “The issues of retirement age, setting up a pension administrator, setting up of budget monitoring unit, persuading companies to set up research centres, among others, have been agreed on” .    “We agreed that all the funding agencies would meet on Thursday and we chart a way forward.” 

 The Guardian reported that, although the Chairman of ASUU refused to speak to the press in an obvious show of dissatisfaction, a source within ASUU said they did not expect the Federal Government to bring all the cards on the table at once so they are still keeping their fingers crossed for next week when their demands would be exhaustively tackled. “For now, the strike continues indefinitely,” the source said.