FG, ASUU to meet on Thursday over protracted strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the federal government are going to meet on Thursday for another meeting in bid to resolve lingering issues.

The details of the meeting were contained in a letter from the office of the ministry of labour and employment, which was addressed to various stakeholders on Wednesday.

According to the letter dated May 11 and signed by C.C. Dike, special adviser (technical) to the labour minister, the meeting will hold at the banquet hall in the state house at 4pm.

NEWSWATChplus gathered that discussions at the meeting will focus on the ongoing ASUU strike, as well as the issues around industrial action by other academic unions.

ASUU had on February 14, embarked on strike action, which has since been extended twice.

On Monday, the union extended the strike for another 12 weeks from May 9 after a meeting of its national executive council (NEC).

In a statement issued after the NEC meeting on Monday, Emmanuel Osodeke, ASUU president, expressed disappointment over the response of the federal government’s response to the union’s demands.

“NEC condemned Federal Government’s cavalier attitude towards the strike action in the last twelve weeks. Government’s resort to the use of starvation as a weapon for breaking the collective resolve of ASUU members and undermine our patriotic struggle to reposition public universities in Nigeria is ill-advised and may prove counterproductive,” the statement said.

“After extensive deliberations, noting government’s failure to live up to its responsibilities and speedily address all the issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) within the additional eight-week roll-over strike period declared on 14th March 2022, NEC resolved that the strike be rolled over for twelve weeks to give government more time to satisfactorily resolve all the outstanding issues. The roll-over strike action is with effect from 12.01a.m. on Monday, 9th May, 2022.”