Finally, ASUU, FG Reach Agreement To End Strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has finally reached an agreement with the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to end the over three months strike.

Naija News reports that the agreement was reached and a deal was signed at a meeting in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital on Thursday, February 7.

This online news platform understands that the minister of labour, Chris Ngige, led the government’s delegation while the ASUU President, Abiodun Ogunyemi, spoke on behalf of the union.

Addressing journalists at the end of the meeting, Ogunyemi said the union was optimistic that the end of the industrial action was near.

His words: “On Sunday, 4th November, 2018, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) resumed its strike action which was conditionally suspended on 14th September, 2017,” he said.

“The action of 2017 was suspended following the signing of a memorandum of action (MoA) in which the federal government of Nigeria (FGN) promised to address the contentious issues within a timeline that was to end in October 2017.

“While announcing the suspension of the nationwide action, however, our Union made it categorically clear that ASUU will not hesitate to review its position should government renege on the signed Memorandum of Action.

“Predictably, Government implemented the MoA in the breach, thereby forcing ASUU to resume the suspended strike action. Comrades and compatriots, as we have always argued, the last thing ASUU members love doing is to cause disruption in smooth intellectual engagements with colleagues, friends and students right on our university campuses. This has nothing to do with the dubious advertorial of non-disruption of academic calendar by proprietors and administrators of some cash-and-carry universities and other self-styled enemies of ASUU.

“Rather, it is about deep-seated pains members of the Union undergo to prevent strike actions and the equally painful consequences strike situations bring to all who are genuinely averse to the mercantile disposition to university education,” he said.