Chidi Samuel
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) said on Wednesday that it is ready to negotiate with the federal government over the ongoing industrial action.
ASUU call out its members on indefinite strike on November 5 to protest what it called failure on the side of the government to honour the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the union and the federal government in 2017.
Abiodun Ogunyemi, the national president of ASUU noted that the N200 billion released by the federal government in September is not an issue but that sum ought to have been released in October 2017 as part of the 2013 agreement.
The national president of ASUU, however, told journalists on Wednesday that union is ready to go into dialogue with government over their grievances and that a meeting with the federal government delegation had been scheduled for 1 pm on Thursday at the instance of Adamu Adamu, minister of education.
He said, “It would be recalled that the federal government had agreed to inject N1.3 trillion to fund universities at N 220 billion yearly for five years.”
“If government fails to fund public universities the situation on campuses may degenerate, worse than the already poor quality teaching and learning environment.”
The ASUU president said that the “no work no pay” threats by the government would not affect the lecturers as the industrial action was legal in Nigerian labour law and international conventions.
Ogunyemi also hopes that the meeting scheduled for Thursday will be used to resolve all the issues that keeps disrupting academic activities in the country.