The leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) led by its president, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke and representatives of the Federal Government led by the minister of education and minister of state, for education Prof. Tahir Mamman, and Dr Yusuf Sununu, held a closed-door meeting on Wednesday evening in an attempt to prevent a potential industrial action by the unionists.
The national leadership of ASUU and various local chapters had given the FG a two-weeks ultimatum to address some lingering issues, including implementing parts of their 2009 agreement or face strike. The meeting reportedly began at about 4:30pm and lasted close to two hours with both sides suggesting some progress was made to address the issues.
Speaking to newsmen shortly after the meeting concluded, president of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke said “We have discussions on all the issues, and we have given assignments to some people to look at and agree on the way forward.” On the potential strike and the ultimatum the union gave the federal government, Osodeke said “What is important is that we have started the process, and our prayers is that we resolve it for the interest of our young men and the interest of the nation.”
“The government has spent one year in office, and we have not been called for any formal meeting. Today we are having the first formal meeting.
“There is a process we have started, and we are going to set deadlines, we are going to meet to look at what has been done on those issues and we hope the process will continue,” he said.
The Minister of education, Tahir Mamman, on his part said “we’ve had a very good meeting and a very productive one. We’ve discussed progress on how to ensure that the system works well and lots of the issues we talked about are those that we inherited and some ongoing.”
