Naija News reports that the two bodies met and commenced meeting today at approximately 4:30 pm at the Education Ministry headquarters in Abuja.
After more than two hours of deliberations, both parties agreed to settle their differences in a peaceful manner to avoid a strike.
The meeting featured the presence of two Education Ministers, Prof. Tahir Mamman and Dr Yusuf Sununu, along with other senior officials from the ministry representing the government’s position.
ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, informed reporters following the meeting that the discussions had just started with hopes that the government would take action on the agreements reached.
“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 said.
Speaking on the two-week ultimatum issued by the union, Osodeke said they would go back and give the details of the meeting to their union members.
He said: “What is important is that we have started the process and our prayers is 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 the 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.”
A Lot Of Consultation Will Continue
On his part, Mamman told journalists that consultations would commence immediately to address the lingering challenges in the education sector.
He said: “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 that are ongoing. We discussed them all without exception and we have a consensus on the way forward.
“A lot of consultations will continue on some information we don’t have, which is 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.”
Naija News reports that ASUU had earlier warned that it might launch a country-wide strike due to the federal government’s inability to fulfill its promises.
The union has directed the government to fulfill all pending requests within a fortnight.
Key areas of dispute include being dropped from the IPPIS, redoing the terms of the 2009 agreement between FGN and ASUU, settling all unpaid Earned Academic Allowance (EAA) backlogs, and addressing all outstanding pay issues, among other matters.
[NaijaNews]