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.
Punchng
No comments:
Post a Comment