For the negotiating team of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) led by its president Emmanuel Osodeke, the meeting with the federal government team on Wednesday was fruitful as all parties have resolved to work towards resolving the lingering issues and hence avert the impending strike action by the union
On the side of FG team, it was was attended by the two Ministers overseeing Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, and Dr Yusuf Sununu and other top officials in the ministry in the federal government’ team.
Osodeke, who spoke on the Channels Television’s ‘Morning Brief’ program on Thursday said unlike the past administration whose minister of labour, Chris Ngiigie,was according to him, the architect of the, crisis , but that he could see meamingful discussions on the part of the current team, but added, ‘We need to see action. We need to see some of these issues resolved in the next four weeks.”
However, while the ASUU boss foresees peace on our campuses when the government walks its talk, he took exceptions to the compositions of the recently appointed Governing Councils members of rhe federal tertiary institutions.
FG, finally released names of the members recently composing of politicians who have held or elected to various offices like former governors, chairmen of political parties, among others.
“We are not happy with inclusion of politicians among the Governing Councils of universities. We don’t want a situation where a former governor is coming for meetings with retinue of aides or coming with fanfare. We don’t want too much expenditures on the members as all efforts should be geared towards judicious use of the resources as they are usually paid sitting allowances. We have directed all our members in the various universities to scrutinise all the appointed members to identify politicians and people with bad records among them,” says Osodeke.
The Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Wednesday ended their closed door meeting with an agreement that all contentious issues will be amicably resolve to avert strike.
The parties also agreed to kick-start a communication process to avert the planned industrial actions by the union.
The parties had entered into a close-door meeting which began at about 4:30 p.m. at the Ministry’s headquarters in Abuja.