Details
of the Monday/ Tuesday marathon meeting between President Goodluck
Jonathan and the leadership of Academic Staff Union of Universities
have begun to emerge.
The 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 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.
“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, will be the joint
guarantors of the agreement while the Minister of Education will be
the implementation officer.
The source also 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 night to further
deliberate on the deal.
Though the details of the meeting were
not known as of 11.22pm on Tuesday, it was gathered that ASUU might
call a National Executive Council meeting on or before Saturday where
the deal would be tabled before all its branch executives.
Jonathan had while shaking hands with
Fagge after the marathon meeting in the Presidential Villa, Abuja
said, “My President, I hope it (strike) will end today(Tuesday). Our
children have suffered enough. We must find a solution.”
All those in attendance responded with a loud “Amen.”
When greeting Omar, he said, “My
President with you around, there will be no problem; our agreement is
signed, sealed and delivered.”.
Faggae told State House correspondent on
his way out of the Villa, that his team would take back a message
to varsity teachers before a decision would be taken on the next
line of action.
“We had a lengthy meeting with Mr.
President, and we looked into how best to address the problem of
university education in this country. We now have a message from Mr.
President that we are going to take to our members and we are expecting
that our members will respond appropriately to his message,” he said.
Fagge added that since the message was meant for members, he would not divulge it to the press.
PUNCH
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