ASUU: We’re ready to negotiate with FG

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says it is ready to negotiate with the federal government over the ongoing industrial action.

Biodun Ogunyemi, national president of ASUU, disclosed this to journalists on Wednesday.

The union commenced an indefinite strike on November 5.

Ogunyemi said the decision was taken due to the poor funding of universities in the country, failure on the side of the government to honour the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the union and the federal government in 2017.

He said a meeting with the federal government delegation had been scheduled for 1pm on Thursday at the instance of Adamu Adamu, minister of education.

According to him, 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.

“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,” Ogunyemi said.

“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.

He added that ASUU is hoping that the meeting scheduled for Thursday will be used to resolve the issues at stake.