At Last! ASUU Gets A Better Deal of N1.1trillion From Jonathan

Details of the Monday/Tuesday marathon meeting between President Goodluck Jonathan and the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities have begun to emerge.

“The meeting should be the longest that we have ever had on this crisis but I can tell you that both parties were frank all through the discussions. 

“The parties also showed commitment towards ending the crisis. The President in particular showed that he was serious about ending the strike and that was why he offered to release over N1tn to the universities in the next five years."

Punch gathered on Tuesday evening that a key component of the agreement reached by the parties was that the Federal Government would inject N1.1tn into public universities in the next five years.

A reliable source, who made this known, also hinted that the strike would be called off anytime next week.

He said the government team which was led by President Goodluck Jonathan would release N220bn yearly into the sector beginning from 2014.

The source added, “The money will be released on a yearly basis at N220bn per annum beginning from 2014. For the outgoing year, the government will only release N100bn and this has been processed.”

He said that the government, in order to show its commitment to a fresh pact, accepted that “the fund (N1.1tn) should domiciled at the Central Bank of Nigeria”

“The money will be released on a quarterly basis to the universities. So, there won’t be any problem about funding the deal,” the source said.

The National Universities Commission and the Trade Union Congress, according to him, are  joint guarantors of the agreement while the Minister of Education will be the implementation officer.

The source said that the government agreed among other things, to revamp the public universities by ensuring that all those issues that always led to strike were dealt with once and for all.

It was learnt that the negotiating team of ASUU led by Dr. Nassir Faggae met on Tuesday to further deliberate on the deal.

 ASUU team have reached an agreement to take the deal offered by Jonathan and that they will meet the larger ASUU caucus by weekend to agree and end the strike.