TheCable

The federal government has scheduled a meeting with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for Thursday.

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.

Emmanuel Osodeke, ASUU president, also confirmed the development to TheCable.

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

A strike embarked upon by ASUU on February 14 has been extended twice — after the period of the first strike lapsed, the union extended it 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 reads.

“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.”

Meanwhile, the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), on Wednesday, declared a two-week strike over non-implementation of its demands by the government.

The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has also issued a three-week ultimatum to the federal government to address its demands

Those expected at the Thursday “Tripartite-Plus” meeting, which is expected to be attended by Ibrahim Gambari, chief of staff to the president, are stakeholders from ASUU and “other registered Trade Unions in Nigerian universities, as well as identified interest groups and civil societies”.

“The Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) would be a party at the meeting,” the letter reads.