By Adeleye Kunle
Nigerian university students on Monday expressed delight over reports that the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, would be calling off their prolonged industrial action soon.
The striking university lecturers had yesterday expressed optimism that the intervention by the House of Representatives on its ongoing face-off with the Federal Government would yield desired results.
The President of ASUU, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, who spoke when the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, briefed the union in Abuja after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari said, “For the first time, we have seen light at the end of the tunnel.”
ASUU shut down public universities in the country on February 14 to demand full implementation of agreements it had entered into with the Federal Government a few years ago.
Track News recalls that the FG had agreed to inject a total of N1.3 trillion into public universities, both state and federal, in six tranches, starting in 2013 after the union decried the deplorable state of the institutions.
In 2013, the government was, according to the agreement, said to have released N200 billion and promised to release N220 billion each year for another five years.
But after releasing the first tranche, the government stopped releasing the funds. In 2017, it, however, released N20 billion. In 2020, it promised to release N25 billion.
ASUU rejected the offer, insisting on N110 billion, which is 50 percent of the N220 billion that it demanded, but the government declined, citing a paucity of funds.
Recall that the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu Adamu, had on August 22, 2022, claimed that the government had resolved most of the demands of ASUU.
Among the demands addressed, according to the Minister, was the release of N50 billion for the payment of earned allowances for universities’ academic and non-academic and non-academic staff
