ASUU Strike - FG Reaches Agreement With ASUU

The Minister Of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige on Wednesday reavels that the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities made progress during their discussions.

This assurance was given while addressing the State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Meeting which was presided over by the Vice President Prof. Yemi Osibanjo, at the state house. Ngige said that ASUU had eight demands of which seven of those demands have been thrashed out. He said, “The government agreed to ASUU's demands but limited it to only endowment fund, and that is fund sourced by ASUU. “But that does not also mean that at the end of the day the university council will not have rights to audit such an account. “That is really the area that is a little bit contentious. “The other aspect of it is the earned allowances; the earned allowance is the only one that is not sorted out now because everyone knows and agrees that we are in a recession, and if we are in a recession and you are asking us to pay you N284 billion, nobody will pay it because the money is not there. “So they agreed and National Assembly also agreed and something was worked out.

“And government offered them some amount pending when we finish the auditing of the first tranche of money that has been given to them in the same area of earned allowances.

 “That tranche of money they collected is being audited but the auditing process is very slow because some people for strange reasons are not allowing auditing to take place.

“A time frame of six months has been fixed within which the auditing will be done.”

 

                                                                       Dr. Chris Ngige

According to Dr Chris Ngige, he said that both the Federal Government and ASUU has re-visited their proposals and return, he added that both the National Assembly and the Executive would look into the finances of the government and propose an appropriation for subsequent years.

He said, “For 2016, there is nothing in the budget for it; it will be done and appropriated and paid when due.

“I don’t think the matter is a helpless case, we are moving forward and next week they will come back with their counter proposal.”

According to the minister, his education counterpart gave an update on the ASUU demand to FEC.