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The Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) have ended their close-door meeting with a truce that all contentious issues will be amicably resolved to avert another strike.
The parties also agreed to kick-start a communication process to avert the planned industrial action by the union.
The parties had entered into a close-door meeting which began at about 4:30 p.m on Wednesday at the ministry’s headquarters in Abuja.
The meeting lasted for over two hours, and had, in attendance, the two ministers overseeing education, Tahir Mamman, and Yusuf Sununu as well as other top officials in the ministry in the Federal Dovernment’s team
ASUU president, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, who led the union’s team, told journalists after the meeting that the negotiation process had begun.
He also expressed hope that the Federal Government would follow up on what had been agreed on.
“We have discussions on all the issues, and we have given assignments to some people to look at and agree on the way forward,” he disclosed.
On the two-week ultimatum issued by the union, Mr Osodeke said they would go back and give the details of the meeting to their members.
“What is important is that we have started the process and our prayers are that we resolve it for the interest of our young men and the interest of the nation.
“The government has spent one year in office and we have not been called for any formal meeting. Today, we are having our first formal meeting.
“There is a process we have started, and we are going to set deadlines, we are going to meet to look at what has been done on those issues, and we hope the process will continue,” he said.
On his part, Mr Mamman said that consultations would commence immediately to overcome the problems bedevilling education
“We’ve had a very good meeting and a very productive one. We’ve discussed progress on how to ensure that the system works well and lots of the issues we talked about are those that we inherited and some ongoing.
“We discussed them all without exception, and we have a consensus on the way forward.
“A lot of consultations will still continue on some information we don’t have, which are beyond the scope of the ministry and which will require us to connect with our colleagues in other ministries.
“But, the most important thing is that we had a very good meeting and agreed to continue with the consultations to overcome the problems bedevilling education in Nigeria,” he said.
It will be recalled that ASUU had threatened to resume a nationwide strike over the Federal Government’s failure to meet its demand
ASUU had charged the government with a two-week deadline to address all outstanding demands by the union.
Some of the issues in contention are the union’s removal from IPPIS, Renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, all the backlog of Earned Academic Allowance (EAA) and all the outstanding salaries, among others.