Details of the Monday/Tuesday
marathon meeting between
President Goodluck Jonathan
and the leadership of the
Academic Staff Union of
Universities have begun to
emerge.
“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."
Punch gathered on Tuesday
evening that a key component of
the agreement reached by the
parties was that the Federal
Government would inject N1.1tn
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 N220bn yearly into the
sector beginning from 2014.
The source added, “The money
will be released on a yearly
basis at N220bn 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, are joint guarantors of the
agreement while the Minister of
Education will be the
implementation officer.
The source 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 to
further deliberate on the deal.
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