ASUU
In
a bid to decide offers made by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led
Federal Government team last week, the Academic Staff Union of
Universities is currently having a crucial National Executive Council
meeting.
A crucial National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the Academic
Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is currently on-going to decide
offers made by the Federal Government team last week when it met with
striking union leaders.
Ahead of the NEC meeting, the various ASUU zones met to also to
consider the offers as well as inputs from the various branches for
presentation to at NEC.
ASUU embarked on an indefinite strike on Monday, August 14 accusing
the Federal Government of failure to redeem the terms of agreement
signed in 2009 and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) endorsed by both
parties in 2012.
One of the zonal coordinators of ASUU told our Correspondent that
NEC started with the meeting of principal officers’ first and later
chairmen from various branches which will aggregate the outcome of their
positions on the offered made by the federal government.
“I must state that the offer from the federal government is a
far cry from our members expectations. Let us see what comes out of this
emergency NEC meeting. Many of our members are not happy with the way
government is handling our demands. It is up to NEC to take a position
on the on-going strike.
"Our members are prepared for a long strike but it depends on the government," the coordinator explained.
He debunked the statement credited to the education minister that ASUU will call off the strike this week stating 'we
didn’t promise the minister anything. We told the government team that
we are going to consult with our members on what government has
offered.'
On what is the likely outcome of NEC meeting, he explained that the
situation is 50-50 noting that members wants to see concrete evidence
that government is serious about the demands. He said the outcome of NEC
will be known on Sunday.
The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, had after a previous
meeting with ASUU leadership promised the nation that the strike would
end within the next one week, since all mechanisms were in place to
resolve the issue in contention.
Adamu in another statement issued after the meeting said: “I
must confess government has not fulfilled its part of the bargain, even
though we are unhappy that ASUU went on this strike without following
due process and giving us good notice. We realised that we promised
something and we didn’t fulfil it.
“There is the issue of Earned Allowances and due to some
miscommunication what was promised could not be done, assuring that it
would be done soon and Government would conduct a forensic audit of the
30billion Naira released in 2010. Others include the registration for
Nigerian Universities Pension Commission, (NUPENCO) Staff
School, the request that universities be allowed to stay off the
Treasury Single Account (TSA), among others.”
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