ASUU strike: FG to renegotiate 2019 agreement with unions in university system

The Federal Government has inaugurated a team to renegotiate the agreement it entered into with unions within the university system, including the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

The renegotiation of the agreement is part of the measures toward finding a solution to the myriad of challenges plaguing the universities, leading to incessant strikes and shutting down of academic activities in most federal universities across the country.

Minister of education, Adamu Adamu, while inaugurating the team in Abuja on Wednesday, said the team which has been approved by President Muhammadu Buhari, would take another look at the 2009 agreement reached with university- based unions and work with each union towards making farreaching recommendations that would reposition the Nigerian university system.

“As you are quite aware, the Federal Government and relevant stakeholders, in the past months, have been neck- deep in several meetings with the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and others, to resolve the outstanding issues that led to the current industrial action in public universities.

“It is noteworthy that although most of residual issues were part of the comprehensive agreement reached with the previous administration, I can report that significant progress has, so far, been recorded and there is an opportunity that our public universities, like their private counterparts, will soon reopen for academic activities.”

The minister noted that, government, like other stakeholders, was also worried about the vicious cycle over the years of the myriad of industrial actions by one staff union or the other.

According to him, the cumulative effect has been the obvious loss of productive and precious man-hour direly needed by the universities to fulfil their tripod mandates of teaching, research and community action.

“All these have impacted negatively on our learning outcomes and the reputation of the Nigerian brand, which hitherto was the pride of the nation”, the minister said

He, therefore, re- affirmed the commitment of the government to finding lasting solutions to the challenges confronting the education sector, and most especially, the university sub-sector.

“Government is determined to, within available resources, provide the requisite environment, infrastructure as well as improve the conditions of service for all categories of staff in Nigerian universities”, he said.

The Federal Government team which is categorised into substantive members, advisers and observers, is led by Munzali M. Jibril.

The team will in addition to renegotiating the 2019 agreement, also propose and prescribe short, medium and long- term measures for the sustainable funding and management of Federal universities, in order to restore lasting peace, stability, harmony and progress in the Nigerian university system.

The team will make any other recommendations, as may be necessary, to ensure the realistic implementation of future agreements, by all stakeholders.