ASUU Latest Gist: ASUU set to Pause about 4 months Strike this week !!

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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.