The Federal government has commenced dialogue with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, to avert the planned strike.
Addressing journalists after a two-hour closed-door meeting in Abuja on Wednesday, the Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman said the meeting was productive as consultations were ongoing and expressed the belief that the issues raised by ASUU would be addressed.
“We’ve had a very good meeting and a very productive one. We’ve discussed progress on how to ensure that the system works well. Lots of the issues we talked about are issues we all inherited and ongoing.
“So we discussed them all without exception and we have a consensus on the way forward.
“A lot of consultations will continue on some information we don’t have which is 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 hopefully overcome the problems bedeviling education in Nigeria,” he said.
The ASUU President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, explained that the negotiation process had begun while hoping that the federal government, would implement what had been agreed on.
Professor Osodeke stated that the meeting was the first between the government and the Union since it came into power.
“We had discussions on all the issues and we have given assignments to some people to look at and we have agreed on the way forward.
”So we will go back and give the details to our members. What is important is that we have started the process and our prayer 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, we hope the process will continue,” said Prof.Osodeke.
ASUU had threatened to embark on a nationwide strike over the federal government’s failure to meet its demands.
Some of the demands include the need for University autonomy, discrepancies in the released list of the reconstituted governing Councils of Universities, renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, payment of all the backlog of Earned Academic Allowance and outstanding salaries.
RN
