Asuu Meets FG again Over 3 Month Old Strike

Let’s pray! Seriously, we need to pray, because this strike is moving to her celebrate her 4 month birthday, and to make matter even worse, JAMB board have just released her jamb 2014 registration scratch card and guidelines on jamb 2014 registration.

According to information reaching dailyschoolnews today, the government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will be meeting today in a last ditch efforts to resolve the lingering crisis in the Nigeria educational sector.

As a prelude to the meeting scheduled for 10.00a.m today, the Federal Government was locked in a meeting with the Vice Chancellors of the federal Universities for about two hours on Monday.

Although, when the supervising Minister of Education, Mr Nyesom Wike, after the closed door meeting yesterday with Federal government, declined comment to newsmen, but told journalists that the government would be meeting with the leadership of ASUU today.

Mr. Wike, who chaired the meeting, which was held at the auditorium of the National Universities Commission (NUC), had said the meeting was a normal interaction with the vice chancellors.

However, before the commencement of the meeting, Mr. Wike excused journalists, personal assistants, his aides and all others, except the vice chancellors, ostensibly to prevent leakage of their deliberations with the federal government.

Trust Nigerians, as Nigerian Tribune gathered that the meeting was to see how the Universities that have been shut for about four months now could be reopened to students as well as fine-tune discussion on the position of the federal government against the meeting with Academic Staff Union of Universities (asuu) today.

Mr. Wike had last week assured Nigerians that the protracted ASUU strike would soon be called off based on the outcome of the last parley with ASUU leadership.

Nigerian Tribune were also able t gathered that based on the fresh agreement between the Federal Government and ASUU, the leadership of ASUU was to go back to brief its members at a meeting after the Eid-el-kabir celebration.

It was gathered, on Monday, that the meeting today would afford the ASUU to report to the Nigerian Federal government about the position of the union on the offers by the Federal Government so far.

The fresh accord struck by the Vice-President Namadi Sambo with the union, government had agreed to increase the N30 billion already released for the payment of academic earned allowance to N40 billion.

According to sources, the government also agreed that the N40 billion should be regarded only as first installment, and not a once-and-for-all payment.

The memorandum drafted at the of the meeting indicated that the government would top it up with further releases once Universities are through with the disbursement of N40 billion.

Accordingly, vice chancellors were urged to expedite the disbursement within the shortest possible time using guiding templates that have been sent by the Committee of Vice Chancellors to them.

On the implementation of the Needs Assessment to Nigerian Universities report, it was stated that the government was cognisant and mindful of the ability of Universities to effectively and efficiently utilise the N100 billion fund immediately, hence that figure.

“However, in addition to this N100 billion dedicated and already to be made available for 2013, N200 billion
(increased from N150 billion previously agreed) will now be earmarked in the 2014 budget, as well as each of the following three-four years until the universities are brought to world-class standard.

Also, on project prioritisation, Universities would now be allowed to determine their priorities and not be “rail-roaded” into implementing a pre-determined set of projects with respect to the NEEDS assessment.

Decisions are not to be centralised.
The government also assured that the operations of the Tertiary education Trust Fund (TETFund) would not be impaired, and that the regular TETFund intervention disbursement to universities woul continue, unaffected.

Although, the President of ASUU, Dr Nasir Isa Fagge, could not confirm the willingness of ASUU to attend today’s meeting, but the Nigerian Tribune gathered that zonal meetings of ASUU in their various Universities were held last week to collate opinion of the members of the government offers.

We just pray that this strike ends, and students who have been admitted start studying.