BY Ebunoluwa Olafusi
The meeting between the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) and the federal government on Thursday ended in a deadlock.
Abiodun Ogunyemi, national president of ASUU, disclosed this to reporters after the meeting.
He said the strike was still ongoing and would not be called off as ASUU’s demands had not been met.
He said the federal government and ASUU teams agreed that the negotiation will resume next week
“We have just started the discussions; we have not really gone far. So, what we have done today is just to open up the issues. So, the strike still continues,” he said
“We have not fixed a date for the next meeting but by tomorrow, we should know.”
He noted that universities in Nigeria had been subjected to 20 years of continued “re-colonisation under alleged democracy”.
According to him, this has further retrogressed the economy in all spheres.
He said the strike is total, comprehensive and indefinite as members have withdrawn their services until government fully implements all outstanding issues.
“This strike is total, comprehensive and indefinite. Our members shall withdraw their services until government fully implement all outstanding issues as contained in the MOA of 2017, and concludes the renegotiation of the 2009 agreements,” he said.
“We have been subjected to 20 years of continued re-colonisation under alleged democracy in which all that the ruling circle have been regrouping among themselves in their various faction they called political parties.”
Members of ASUU embarked on indefinite strike on August 13, following government’s failure to implement the agreement reached in November 2016.
ASUU demands include the disputed registration of the Nigerian Universities Pension Management Company, fractionalisation of salaries in federal universities, gross under-funding and non-funding of state universities.
Others are arrears and implementation of earned academic allowances, release of fund for revitalisation of public universities as spit out in the 2013 memorandum of understanding, among others.
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