The federal government has taken a major step toward finding solutions to its ongoing faceoff with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) by setting up a tactical committee to review the no-work no-pay policy which the striking lecturers have kicked against.
The lecturers’ union has continued to maintain that its members have to be fully paid for the period they were on strike before they return to work.
Africa Daily News, New York reports that the setting up of the committee came on the heels of a meeting by the minister of education, Adamu Adamu, with pro-chancellors, chairmen of Councils as well as Vice Chancellors of universities.
The meeting held behind closed doors was part of efforts to resolve the industrial action by lecturers of public universities which has now entered its seven-month.
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The director press and public relations at the Federal Ministry of Education, Ben Goong, disclosed this to journalists after the meeting which lasted for over two hours.
He said the committee is to also look into issues of increase in the salaries of the university lecturers and come up with workable solutions.
The spokesman for the ministry did not give a specific timeline for the 14-man committee. He, however, said the committee is expected to come up with its findings in no distant time, and that its report will be forwarded to President Muhammadu Buhari for action.
The federal government help the meeting with vice chancellors and pro-chancellors of its universities in the renewed efforts to end the ongoing strike by ASUU.
After exhaustive deliberations, the stakeholders set up a committee to review the recent report of the Prof. Nimi Brigg’s Committee, which engaged ASUU on its demands from the government.
The minister of education, Malam Adamu Adamu, at the meeting, described the indefinite strike by ASUU as anguish and internal turmoil to him.
Adamu said he wanted the parties to reach an amicable resolution of all the issues contained in the 2009 agreements because the past two weeks had been a very dark period in the nation’s education sector.
The Briggs’ committee renegotiated the controversial 2009 agreement between the government and the university-based staff unions.
