Clues have emerged that the Academic Staff Union of Universities may
possibly pause of stop strike the around four-month-old strike on Thursday. Barring
a last-minute change, the National Government Committee of ASUU will
match on Thursday night to think about the positioning of the congresses
of the over 50 public universities base on the present offer made by the
Federal government to revamp the institutions.
The union met with a Federal Government group led by President Goodluck Jonathan last Tuesday in Abuja.
Continue after the break.
The
ASUU authority, after briefing the zonal coordinators on the
present, had focused the area branches to organise congress meetings
between Friday last week and Tuesday (tomorrow).
That
is to enable most of the lecturers to make insight into the activity
the union would take after its NEC conference on Thursday.
But,
feelers from many universities that had organised their congresses
unveiled that ASUU would hold the strike following the Thursday NEC
meeting. In
some universities, including the Obafemi Awolowo Uni and the Lagos
State Uni which have scheduled their congress meetings for Saturday
(2day), union leaders and lecturers indicated trust that the reach
would end this week.
Also,
some prime officials of the union in some of the eight locations of
ASUU said although they certainly were maybe not pleased with the plan
by the government to insert N220bn annual in to people universities for
another five years, they certainly were delighted a responsibility have
been obtained by the union.
Though
the Ibadan Zonal Coordinator of ASUU, Dr. Nasir Adesola, proved that
the NEC conference would hold on tight Thursday, he didn't state whether
the long strike would be called off or continues.
“Yes,
the NEC will hold on tThursday evening but ASUU has a procedure
which we are going to follow. NEC reserves the power to call off the
long strike after due consultation with people and this is the reason
congresses are now being named in most of the sections of the union.
Please, cool down till after the congress,” he told our source on the telephone.
But
another resource said, “Our NEC conference will hold between Wed. night and Thursday. Our sections have started keeping meetings to go
over the Federal Government's offer. That is to allow insight from most
of the lecturers. We have to carry them along in order to avoid
disunity because there are techniques by some components to infiltrate
us.”
Yet
another resource told our source that some people had
indicated blended thoughts about the Federal Government's new present
predicated on their refusal to honour past agreements.
“The
radicals among us are sceptical about any of it latest offer. They
maybe not think that government will regard the agreement. Their view
is that government only wants to deceive the union to stop or call off the strike before it will jettison it.”
A report at the meeting between the federal government and ASUU told
one of our correspondents that the federal government after having a
long debate decided to inject N220bn annually for the next five yr start from 2014.
He
had said,
“The conference ought to be the longest that we have ever had
with this crisis but I will tell you that both parties were frank all
through the discussions. The parties also showed responsibility towards
finishing the crisis. The Leader particularly showed he was seriously
interested in finishing the strike and that was why he offered to
produce around N1tn to the universities within the next five years.
“The
money will soon be given on an annually schedule at N220bn per annum
start from 2014. For the outgoing year, the Federal Government will
simply launch N100bn and it has been processed.
“To
be able to display responsibility to the deal, the amount of money will
soon be held at the Main Bank of Nigeria and will soon be given on a
quarterly schedule to the universities. Therefore, there won't be any
problem about funding the deal.”
The
source added that the National Universities Commission and the Business
Union Congress would be combined guarantors of the new agreement
whilst the Minister of Knowledge is the implementation officer.
He
said that the government also agreed, among other items, to revamp
the general public universities by ensuring that most the problems that
always result in strike were dealt with when and for all.
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