In a crucial effort to prevent an impending strike, the Federal Government (FG) and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) concluded a significant closed-door meeting on Wednesday, pledging to resolve all contentious issues amicably.
The meeting, which commenced at approximately 4:30 pm at the Ministry of Education headquarters in Abuja, lasted over two hours. It included key figures from the federal government, such as Education Ministers Prof. Tahir Mamman and Dr. Yusuf Sununu, along with other top officials. The ASUU delegation was led by its President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke.
Following the meeting, Prof. Osodeke addressed the press, indicating that the negotiation process had begun, and expressed hope that the government would adhere to the agreements made.
“We have discussions on all the issues and we have given assignments to some people to look at and agree on the way forward,” Osodeke stated. Regarding the two-week ultimatum issued by ASUU, he mentioned that they would brief their members on the meeting’s details.
Emphasizing the importance of the process, Osodeke said, “Our prayers are 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 and we hope the process will continue.”
Prof. Mamman, representing the FG, highlighted the productivity of the meeting and the ongoing consultations needed to address the issues in the education sector.
“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 and lots of the issues we talked about are those that we inherited and some that are ongoing. We discussed them all without exception and we have a consensus on the way forward,” Mamman said.
He further noted the necessity of further consultations, involving other ministries, to gather comprehensive information and solve the existing problems. “The most important thing is that we had a very good meeting and agreed to continue with the consultations to overcome the problems bedevilling education in Nigeria,” he added.
This meeting comes in the wake of ASUU’s threat to initiate a nationwide strike due to the FG’s failure to meet its demands, including removal from IPPIS, renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, addressing the backlog of Earned Academic Allowance (EAA), and resolving outstanding salary issues. ASUU had set a two-week deadline for the government to act on these demands.
