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.

source... https://www.facebook.com/247naijanews

front page please


front page

.

[color=#990000][/color]
This is actually a good development. I am happy @ least for my colleagues in this strikin schools 2 go bak 2 their classes and I also hope my sch RSUST dat is not on strike benefit from that intervention. Cos we need development too even though we didn't join in the strike.

My pain with this country is that people will be complaining that the Nigerian government is corrupt, but I can tell you that despite this development, the so called ASUU will not hold any meeting so as to sensitize her members to ensure quality education, they are just concern about money, when the quality of their lectures are nothing to write home about.
It pains me greatly to see a lecturer just attaching marks for the purchase of his text book, turning the education system to personal business environment.
There is no difference between the days when primary and secondary school teachers will bring melon(egusi) for pupils and students to get their hands busy because they want a better report from their teachers or teachers making it compulsory for them to break these melon.
University lecturers has been a major problem with the education sector and not even the Federal government. Lecturers turning into tyrants and acting like politicians because they are not accessible to their students.
We are still watching. If despite what the Federal government has done, the Lecturers don't improve their quality of teaching, then am very sure Students will soon be the ones having serious issues with the always-striking-but-not-teaching-lecturers