IN an apparent move to avert the looming strike action in the nation’s University System, the Federal Government has reopened talks with the leadership of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The meeting at the instance of Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, was held late Wednesday at the Minister’s office, Abuja.
Recall that various chapters of ASUU had commenced consultation on the next line of action following the failure of the Federal Government to address their demands for renegotiation of 2009 agreement and non-payment of four months’ salary arrears among others.
President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, who spoke with newsmen after about two hours of closed-door meeting, said the meeting was necessary as the current administration had spent more than one year in office without addressing issues affecting the university system.
According to him, the dialogue has commenced while hoping that the Federal Government, through the Minister, would follow up on what had been agreed on.
“We had discussions on all the issues and we have given assignments to some people to look at and we have agreed on the way forward.
“So we will go back and give the details to our members. What is important is that we have started the process and our prayer is that we resolve it for the interest of our young men and the interest of the nation.
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“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, we hope the process will continue,” he said.
Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman on his part, said consultations would begin immediately on how to resolve the challenges in the nation’s universities.
“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 issues we all inherited and ongoing.
“So we discussed them all without exception and we have consensus on the way forward.
“A lot of consultations will still continue on some information we don’t have which are beyond the scope of the ministry and which will require us to connect with our colleagues in other ministries.”
