The national leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, and the team from the Federal Government are to meet later this week to avert another round of strike by the university lecturers.

The date for the meeting is to be communicated to the leadership of ASUU during the week by the government team which will include officials of the Education and Labour Ministries, the ministers and leaders of some relevant government agencies.

The Chairman, Lagos Zone of ASUU, Dr Adelaja Odukoya, while speaking with our correspondent yesterday, said the meeting would hold this week, going by assurances from the government side.

“As a union, we are not opposed to negotiation and amicable resolution of issues. In this case, we are awaiting the government team to call us for the meeting. They said it’s going to be this week, we are waiting. They have not given us the date but we are waiting.

“There is no doubt that we have given the government enough time to meet our demands and do the needful. We met with them on August 2, this year and following the meeting, we gave them till the end of August to do certain things

”The deadline lapsed and up until now, none of the demands has been met. We have given them more than enough time.

“Let us be hopeful that they would do the needful this time around. But people can see that ASUU has been reasonable and considerate enough,” he said.

Recall that after the nine months strike by the union was called off on December 23 last year, among the expectations by the union was that the N40 billion revitalisation fund promised government-owned universities be paid, as well as the Earned Academic Allowances among others.

However, the government is blaming the delay in the payment of the fund on bureaucracy at the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, a claim ASUU has consistently faulted.

(Vanguard)

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