The Federal Government of Nigeria, yesterday, Wednesday, June 26, moved to avert another round of strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU. The FG set up a committee to address “unresolved” demands raised by the union.
According to reports, the constituted committee has two to four weeks to turn in its report.
This is coming barely 48 hours after ASUU appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to wade into the “unresolved issues which are not new.” The union made the plea in order to avoid another prolonged strike and shut down of the nation’s universities.
According to the Minister of State for Education Tanko Sununu, the panel was set up after a two-hour meeting between a Federal Government team and ASUU leadership in Abuja on Wednesday.
The Education Minister Tahir Mamman and his Minister of State, Tanko Sununu led other top Federal Government officials to the meeting. While the ASUU President Emmanuel Osodeke headed the union’s team.
Addressing journalists at the end of the meeting, Sununu said: “We have reached a certain understanding with ASUU. We agreed to set up a committee with a timeline of two- to four weeks. Within, which we are going to reconvene and look at all the issues.
“ASUU is going to forward some documents to the ministry. So, we are going to take a look at them.”
On his part, the Education Minister, Mamman said he was optimistic that the problems bedeviling the education sector would be overcome.
He said: “We had a very good meeting. 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 those that we inherited and some on-going.
However, attempts to get the ASUU President, Osodeke to react to the announcement by Sununu were futile.
He had, however, told reporters after the meeting that he was hopeful that the Government would follow up on what had been agreed on.
“We have discussions on all the issues. And we have given assignments to some people to look at, and agree on the way forward.”
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