THE Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) finally called off its five-week old nationwide strike on Monday night. It directed its members across the country to resume to their duty posts today, after their council congresses.
However, ASUU President, Comrade Biodun Ogunyemi, warned that the suspension of the strike is conditional.
Addressing a press conference last night at the Labour House, Abuja, Ogunyemi said: “After an elaborate and an exhaustive consultation process, the National Executive Council of ASUU has agreed to conditionally suspend the ongoing strike action; taking into cognisance that the latest proposal from government to address the pending issues in the strike action has a deadline of the end of October 2017.
“All members of ASUU are to resume work after their branch congresses tomorrow 19th September, 2017.
“However, ASUU will not hesitate to review his position if government reneges on its signed memorandum of action which we all witnessed today.”
He emphasized that ASUU would not be hold responsible for anything that would happen again, if the government failed to abide with and implement the agreement reached.
After weeks of negotiations and meetings between the Federal Government and ASUU, an agreement christened “Memorandum of Action,” was signed between the parties yesterday.
Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, who led the government team and served as conciliator read the agreement after another round of marathon meeting last night.
Speaking after the agreement was signed, Ngige said “we have made a lot of progress and today we have considerably dealt with all the grey areas to the satisfaction of ASUU.”
According to the minister: “This is a labour negotiation, we have produced what we called collective agreement with government but for ASUU it is called Memorandum of Action because they want implementation not paper work
“We have done this document and you have watched all of us signed this document and this is a document that instills the various conciliation meetings that we have had here.
“We understand ourselves and have agreed on many issues in the spirit of give and take. Government will implement this document and as I have assured ASUU, this government is a government of change. We are not like other governments in the past.
“We are facing a real economic downturn in the country, the earnings of the country has gone down.”
On the terms of the agreement, Ngige said: “We agreed on funding for revitalisation of universities, we also agreed on the earned allowances, we agreed on government responsibility as regards to the university staff schools, we agreed on pension, we agreed on salary shortfalls. We also reached agreement on TSA and ASUU agreed on exemption in the areas given to them
“ASUU is going back to consult their members with a view of calling off this strike which has gone into the fifth week.
“We hope we will hear good news from them in the next 24 hours so that our children can go back to school. They have negotiated very well.”
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