The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said they would suspend strike within 24 hours once the resolutions reached with President Goodluck Jonathan on November 4 were accepted.photo
The Union, however, described the statement credited to Supervising Minister and Minister of Education, Barr Nyesom Wike, that ASUU was making new outrageous demands as "untrue and absolute lie".
ASUU’s position was made known by the National Treasurer, Dr. Ademola Aremu, in an interview with The Nation in Ibadan on Wednesday.
The Union said it asked Jonathan to facilitate the endorsement of resolutions reached with him and signed by high ranking government official preferably the Attorney-General of the Federation but not a Permanent Secretary.
ASUU said their representative of the body, including the President of Nigeria Labour Congress, Abdulwahid Omar, would stand as witnesses.
Aremu also said the striking lecturers wanted the N200 billion agreed upon as 2013 revitalisation fund for public universities to be warehoused with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and disbursed to the benefiting universities.
He noted that ASUU appreciated the intervention of the President, but then added that some of the resolutions reached with Jonathan were not included in the letter sent to the Union.
According to him, the supervising Minister of Education forgot to mention that apart from the N30 billion earned allowances released for university staff, the FG was yet to release N100 billion claimed to have been released.
In its letter to Wike, ASUU listed their conditions. These are the payment of four months salaries, which accumulated during the period of the strike; immediate implementation of the N1.2 trillion offered by the FG to public universities, starting with the release of N100 billion this year; and the balance of N1.1 trillion to be spread over five years from 2014. The union also demanded that the salary arrears must not be paid in piecemeal.
It will be recalled that President Jonathan met with the ASUU on November 4. The marathon-like meeting lasted for 13 hours but did not put an end to the Union's industrial action.
The Union has embarked on an indefinite strike on July 1, 2013, protesting against an alleged FG's failure to honor an agreement signed between the FG and ASUU in 2009. Part of the agreement dwelt on funding of universities where both parties agreed that each federal university should get at least N1.5 trillion between 2009 and 2011 while state universities, within the same period, should receive N3.6 million per student.
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