The Federal Ministry of Education, on Wednesday, said the Federal Government was working to avert another strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities.
Rising from its National Executive Council meeting, held at the University of Ibadan last weekend, ASUU had given the Federal Government a 21-day ultimatum to meet its outstanding demands or lecturers would go on strike.
Further speaking on Wednesday at a press briefing at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, Abia State, ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, insisted that lecturers would be forced to embark on another strike except the Federal Government met their demands before the expiration of the 21-day ultimatum.
But when contacted on the phone on Wednesday evening to react to the strike threat, the spokesperson for the federal Ministry of Education, Folashade Biriowo said:
“The ministry is working on it.”
The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, on June 26, invited ASUU for a meeting to deliberate on the lingering issues affecting universities and to avert the planned strike.
The ASUU President, who spoke on the outcome of the meeting, said the agreements reached with the Federal Government had not been implemented.
Osodeke said it was regrettable that “university issues, over which ASUU has been engaging the federal and state governments in the last one decade or so, are yet to be meaningfully addressed. These issues include review and signing of the renegotiated 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement; impactful funding.”
“After extensive deliberations on the foregoing, among others, ASUU NEC, at its last meeting, resolved to condemn in strong terms the seeming refusal of the federal and state governments to decisively address all outstanding issues with ASUU, reject the slow pace of intervention by the Minister for Education in resolving the aforementioned issues, give the government a 21-day ultimatum to address all outstanding issues, and reconvene at the expiration of the 21 days’ notice to take an appropriate decision(s) as deemed necessary.”
The ASUU President, however, said the union was more interested in dialogue, while shoving off “ethnic suspicion, religious bigotry, plutocratic tendencies and such other practices that are inimical to our peaceful co-existence and collective happiness as a people of one nation.”