ASUU strike might be called off next week.

 
Initially I reported that the result of the ASUU strike marathon meeting on Monday night/Tuesday morning wasn't made known to our reporter, however here are the exclusive details of the agreement reached by both the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities and President Goodluck Jonathan...

The key component of the agreement reached by the parties was that the Federal Government would inject N1.1trillion into public universities in the next five years. 

A reliable source, who made this known, also hinted that the strike would be called off anytime next week.

He  said the government team which was led by President Goodluck Jonathan would release   N220billion yearly into the sector beginning from 2014.

The source added, “The meeting should be the longest that we have ever had on this crisis but I can tell you that both parties were frank all through the discussions.The parties also showed commitment towards ending the crisis. The President in particular showed that he was serious about ending the strike and that was why he offered to release over N1tn to the universities in the next five years.The money will be released on a yearly basis at N220billion per annum beginning from 2014. For the outgoing year, the  government will only release N100bn and this has been processed.”

He said that the government, in order to show its commitment to a fresh pact, accepted that “the fund(N1.1tn) should   domiciled at the Central Bank  of Nigeria”

“The  money will be released on a quarterly basis to the universities. So, there won’t be any problem about funding the deal,” the source said.

The National Universities Commission and the Trade Union Congress, according to him, will    be the  joint guarantors  of  the  agreement while the Minister of Education will  be the implementation officer.

The source also said  that the government   agreed among other things, to revamp the public universities by ensuring that all those issues that always led to strike were dealt with once and for all.

It was  learnt that the negotiating team of ASUU  led by  Dr. Nassir Faggae met on Tuesday night to further  deliberate on the  deal.Though the details of the meeting  were  not known as of 11.22pm on Tuesday, it was gathered that ASUU might call a National Executive Council meeting on or before Saturday where the   deal would be tabled  before  all its  branch executives.

Hopefully the strike will be called off some time next week then.