It is just nine days to the end of the month and expiration of the ultimatum issued by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), to the Federal Government to meet the six new conditions it rolled out. Lecturers, parents and students alike are watching the development with bated breath. And the question on their lips is, “will this present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari finally put to rest the imbroglio between ASUU and the government?”
The union, which embarked on industrial action on Monday, August 14, 2017, accused government of failure to redeem the terms of agreement signed in 2009 and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) endorsed by both parties in 2012.
The action, which lasted five weeks, one of the shortest in the country’s history, was called off as a ‘conditional suspension’ to give the Federal Government time to implement what was contained in the memorandum of action the two parties entered into.
There were several meetings between both parties. The last meeting with ASUU, led by Prof. Abiodun Ogunyemi, its national president and Senator Chris Ngige, minister of labour and employment, who led the Federal Government team was meant to last for an hour, but both parties ended up negotiating for almost four hours before any agreement was reached the various contending issues.
After the meeting, Ogunyemi said in event the government in her characteristic nature failed to implement the agreement, the union will not hesitate to take appropriate action and that all the items on the list had a time line.
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The union went ahead to issue a statement which read in part: “After an elaborate and extensive consultation process, the National Executive Council (NEC) of ASUU has agreed to conditionally suspend the on-going action, taking into cognisance that major proposals from government to address the contending issues in the strike action has a deadline of the end of October, 2017.
“As a Union of intellectuals, ASUU shall not relent in confronting all human and artificial barriers to a transformed university education for the betterment of Nigerians and our dear Nation. For us, this may be a life-time project. We owe it to prosperity, for the sake of our children and their children’s children.”
After the said meeting, Ngige said all the grey areas had been sorted out and an agreement reached and that the content of the agreement was taken from the series of meeting with the union since the commencement of the strike. He said members of the union had insisted that they were tired of having agreements which were never implemented
Ngige also said that both the government and the union understood themselves and agreed in several issues, and thus gave his assurance that the agreement reached will be implemented by the government in line with available resources.
According to reports, the areas of agreement include funding for revitalization of public universities and the issue of Earn Academic Allowances; the issue of University Staff Schools and the implementation of the judgment of the National Industrial Court; National Universities Pension Management Company; and guidelines for pension matters for Professors.
Ngige said the union agreed to the exemption offered by the government regarding the TSA, which include the issue of grants, endowment fund as well as salary short fall which he said is already being implemented by government. On the issue of state universities, he said they agreed that the union will submit a position paper to the federal government on their observation with a view for government to advise state government on the funding of state universities.
He described the union as patriotic members of the society, pointing out that anybody who demands better working equipment is no doubt a patriot.
While the expiry date is round the corner, parents, students and several other affiliate unions pray that the federal government will make good its promises in order to avert another such protest with universities shutting down for several weeks.
Meanwhile since the agreements were reached and the industrial action called off, and initial statements made, nothing else has been heard from both parties. There are talks in some quarters that the deal is still on; probably government is taking its time to come out with something worthwhile.
MABEL DIMMA
