ASUU STRIKE UPDATE: ASUU SET TO CALL OFF STRIKE. [COMPLETE STORY]

Details of the Monday/Tuesday
marathon meeting between President
Goodluck Jonathan and the
leadership of the Academic Staff
Union of Universities have begun to
emerge.
“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 N1trillion to the
universities in the next five years.
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 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, are joint guarantors
of the agreement while the Minister
of Education will be the
implementation officer.The source
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 to further
deliberate on the deal.
We gathered the ASUU team have
reached an agreement to take the
deal offered by Jonathan and that
they will meet the larger ASUU
caucus by weekend to agree and end
the strike.
Source:- Punch