The federal government and the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) have reached a partial agreement, Chris Ngige, the minister of labour and employment, announced on Monday.
Ngige made the announcement at a
reconciliation meeting aimed at finding ways of resolving the strike which
commenced on November 5.
He said: “We have finished our
deliberation for today. I am happy to report that we touched some areas of
understanding in implementation from the memorandum of action which we agreed
to in 2017.
“Some of these areas we have
substantial compliance and some other areas have not been fully dealt with.
“Like the issue of shortfall in
salaries of some federal universities’ workers and lecturers, ASUU has given a
list to the accountant-general’s office and we have agreed that by Wednesday
that list should be cross-checked by the presidential initiative on continuous
auditing.
“So, the accountant-general’s
office is to get back to us by Wednesday.
“We also have the issue of earned
allowances, revitalisation, these are issues of 2009 agreement and partial
implementation and we have agreed on the modus operandi to look into the fund
situation, this is due to low revenue on the part of government.”
He noted that the meeting had
identified one area to look for the funds for the revalidation that the
appropriate government organ would be contacted on the issue.
Ngige said the government was
sure to have good information for the striking lecturers.
He said: “We have agreed on what
we are going to do to make sure that the outstanding amount is handled in a way
that all parties will be properly accommodated.
“We also discussed the issue of
state universities and agreed also that even if education is on the concurrent
list, the universities should be properly funded and staffed so that we do not
produce half-baked students from those universities.
“In realisation of this the
ministry of education will set up a committee, that would engage the Nigeria Governors’
Forum, and the minister of education has taken steps in that direction to
formalise the interaction.
“Thus discussion are fruitful and
we do hope that in the next adjourned date we would have had the requisite
result on the few agreements reached today.”
On his part, Abiodun Ogunyemi,
ASUU national president, said: “Our own understanding is that we heard promises
made on the part of government, we shall await the report on all the issues,
which they have made the promises.
“Only after that, we can get back
to our members to take a decision.”
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