ASUU set to suspend strike this week. NOVEMBER 11, 2013 BY SEGUN OLUGBILE
AND KAMARUDEEN OGUNDELE
Indications have emerged that the Academic Staff Union of Universities may call off the over four month old strike on Thursday.
Barring a last-minute change, the National
Executive Committee of ASUU will meet on
Wednesday night to consider the position of
the congresses of the over 50 public Universities on the offer made by the
Federal Government to revamp the institutions.
The union met with a Federal Government
team led by President Goodluck Jonathan last
Tuesday in Abuja.
The ASUU leadership, after briefing the zonal
coordinators on the offer, had directed the local branches to organise congress meetings between Friday last week and Tuesday (tomorrow).
This is to enable all the lecturers to make input into the action the union would
take after its NEC meeting on Thursday. However, feelers from most Universities that had organised their congresses revealed that
ASUU would suspend the strike after the Thursday NEC meeting. In some Universities, including the
Obafemi Awolowo University and the Lagos
State University that have scheduled their congress
meetings for Monday (today), union leaders
and lecturers expressed hope that the strike would end this week. Also, some top officials of the union in
some of the nine zones of ASUU said even though they were not happy with the plan by the Government to inject N220bn yearly into the
public Universities for the next five years, they
were pleased that a commitment had been
obtained by the union.
Though the Ibadan Zonal Coordinator of ASUU,
Dr. Nasir Adesola, confirmed that the NEC
meeting would hold on Wednesday, he did not
say whether the strike would be called off or not.
“Yes, the NEC will hold on Wednesday evening
but ASUU has a process which we are going to
follow. NEC reserves the right to call off the strike after due consultation with
members and this is why congresses are being
called in all the chapters of the union. Please, wait till
after the congress,” he told one of our correspondents on the telephone. But another source said, “Our NEC meeting will hold between Wednesday night
and Thursday. Our chapters have started holding
meetings to discuss the Federal Government’s
offer. This is to allow input from all the lecturers. We have to carry them along
to avoid disunity since there are moves by some
elements to infiltrate us.”
Another source told one of our correspondents
that some members had expressed mixed
feelings about the Federal
Government’s new offer based on its refusal to honour past agreements.
“The radicals among us are sceptical about
this latest offer. They do not believe that
Government will respect the agreement. Their
view is that government only wants to deceive the union to call off the strike
before it will jettison it.”
A top official of the union, who confirmed the fears, told one of our correspondents that
although members’ opinions at the zonal
congresses were divided over the Government’s offer, the majority still
decided to give the government the benefit of the doubt.
He also said that the majority opinion was that the review of the agreement which was
supposed to hold this year should be postponed till next year in the interest
of peace.
The official added, “Members were persuaded
because President Goodluck Jonathan
personally met with the union. They felt since
the President was involved in the negotiation
this time around, the Government would not
say that it was arm-twisted to make the offer.
“This is the problem we are having with the 2009 agreement. By now we should be talking
about a review but we are still having troubles
with implementation.
“Although feelers across the zones are that we
should call off the strike, we are going to put
down the Government offer in black and white
and make it public so that nobody accuses us
tomorrow of asking for too much.” Some Universities are expected to hold their
congresses on Monday (today) to discuss the
outcome of the zonal congresses held at nine
centres across the country last week. A source at the meeting between the
Government and ASUU told one of our correspondents that the Government
after a long debate agreed to inject N220bn yearly for
the next five years beginning from 2014.
He had said, “The meeting should be the longest that we have ever had on this
crisis but I can tell you that both parties were frank
all through the discussions. The parties also showed commitment towards ending
the
crisis. The President in particular
showed that
he was serious about ending the strike and
that was why he offered to release over N1tn
to the universities in the next five
years.
“The money will be released on a
yearly basis
at N220bn per annum beginning from 2014.
For the outgoing year, the Federal Government
will only release N100bn and this has been processed. “In order to show commitment to this
deal, the money will be kept at the Central Bank
of Nigeria and will be released on a quarterly
basis to the Universities. So, there won’t be any problem about funding the deal.”
The source added that the National Universities Commission and the Trade
Union Congress would be joint guarantors of the
new agreement while the Minister of Education would be the implementation officer. He said that the Government also agreed,
among other things, to revamp the public
Universities by ensuring that all the issues that
always lead to strike were dealt with once and for all.