ASUU set to end strike today

ASUU president, Fagge

There are strong indications that the strike embarked on by the Academic Staff Union of Universities since July 1, will be called off today.

Feelers from a meeting by the National Executive Council of ASUU held at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State on Monday indicated this.

 Though no official of the union was ready to confirm this, a source, who attended the meeting, said members of the union’s negotiating team had agreed to call off the strike.

According to the source, the National President of the union, Dr. Nasir Fagge, will address members of the press today at noon where he is likely going to announce the suspension of the strike.

The source spoke to one of our correspondents at 12.50am today.

But before then another source at the meeting had confided in one of our correspondents as of 10pm that the NEC members comprising all the branch chairmen of ASUU and zonal coordinators were still deliberating on the issue.

The source said, “The meeting is still ongoing. No decision has been reached, but an official position of the union would be issued by the President the moment we are through with the meeting.”

 The leadership of the union had last week after a meeting with the Federal Government representatives in Abuja, promised to end the strikewithin a week.

This came after the Federal Government provided evidence that it had domiciled N200bn in the Central Bank of Nigeria for the provision of infrastructure in the nation’s public universities among other sundry issues.

Meanwhile, journalists who gathered at the venue to cover the outcome of the meeting were harassed by some ASUU officials who called them unprintable names.

In fact, one of the ASUU officials was heard shouting, “Who invited these stupid people here?”

The Chairman, ASUU, FUT, Minna, Dr. Abdulfatai Jimoh, particularly assaulted the Daily Trust Correspondent, Aliyu Hamagan.

Jimoh had earlier thought Hamagan was a member of the union and invited him to come closer. He then asked, “Who brought this stupid people inside? What are they doing here?”

Hamagan quickly responded by saying, “I am one of the people you are calling stupid. I will not have you insult us like  that.”

Abdulfatai on finding out that he was speaking with a journalist pushed Hamagan and asked him to leave the premises saying that, “You people are intruding, we did not invite you, get out of this place now.”

The meeting started about 11:30am.