ICent Rex

The hope of many university students across the country to resume academic activities soon may have been dashed. The striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has rejected the offers made to it early this week by the Nigerian government. At the seventh meeting with the leadership of ASUU on Tuesday, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, said the labour dispute with the university teachers was on the verge of being resolved. He listed the fresh concessions made by the administration to ASUU. According to Mr Ngige, the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Ministry of Finance presented evidence that N15.4 billion had been released to public universities. On earned academic allowances, he said President Muhammadu Buhari approved N20 billion to offset arrears of the 2009 to 2012 verified earnings by university teachers. But in an exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES early Saturday morning, the President of ASUU, Biodun Ogunyemi, said upo...

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has staged a walkout from the meeting with a federal government delegation. The government delegation was led by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige. The university lecturers embarked on an indefinite strike on November 4, demanding improved funding of universities and implementation of previous agreements with the government. The National President of ASUU, Biodun Ogunyemi, led the union’s delegation to Monday’s meeting. The ASUU delegation arrived at the ministry at exactly 5:00 p.m. but no member of the federal government delegation was around as at this time. The government delegation led by the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, arrived at exactly 6:00 p.m. The minister of education, Adamu Adamu, was absent at the time the meeting started. Before the walkout and at the start of the meeting, Mr Ngige told the lecturers that he hopes a consensus on most of the issues is reached at the end of the meeting. ...

The Federal Government is expected to hold another emergency meeting with the Academic Staff Union of Universities on Monday in a bid to end the ongoing strike in public universities. The last meeting between the two parties took place on November 15. Despite the meeting lasting for six hours, the strike was not called off because no agreement was reached. Our correspondent learnt on Sunday that today’s meeting would again focus on the issues in the 2017 Memorandum of Action, which the union claimed the Federal Government had neglected. Public universities lecturers began their strike on November 5, saying the Federal Government had failed to implement the key areas of focus contained in the MoA. From a copy of the FG/ASUU 2017 agreement obtained by our correspondent, the issues still under contention are the funding of public universities, earned academic allowances, salary shortfalls and pension matters. The President of ASUU, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi, in an interview with our ...

Improve what we have first, ASUU says The National Assembly is working to create 80 new federal universities, polytechnics and colleges of education despite poor funding for the existing tertiary institutions. If these new institutions are created, it will bring the total number of federal educational institutions to 164. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been on strike in the last three weeks over inadequate funding of research and infrastructure in the federal universities. Daily Trust findings revealed that there are presently 80 bills at various legislative processes pending before the Senate and the House of Representatives for the establishment of tertiary institutions across the country. In the 2018 budget, the 84 existing federal government tertiary institutions across the country were allocated N367 billion out of the over N600 billion approved for the education sector. The 80 proposed federal institutions, spread across the 36 states of the federation ...