There is strong indication that academic activities may resume in the nation’s public universities early next week, Saturday Punch has gathered.
Our correspondent gathered on Friday
that members of the National Executive Council of the Academic Staff
Union of the Universities again converged on Kano to deliberate on
whether to call off their over four months old industrial action or not.
The NEC members, who gathered at the
Bayero University, Kano, penultimate week to review the reports of the
various university congresses over the strike, suspended the meeting
following the death of Dr. Festus Iyayi. Iyayi, a University of Benin
lecturer and former ASUU president, who died in an auto accident
involving the convoy of the Kogi State Governor, Idris Wada, on his way
to Kano to attend the NEC meeting.
There has been no date yet for the interment of his remains.
However, feelers from Kano on Friday indicated that the ASUU members went into hiding for the meeting.
One of our correspondents gathered that
the NEC members, who reconvened in BUK, on Thursday, retired to a secret
location for the meeting.
Reporters made frantic efforts to trace the venue of the meeting without success.
But many vehicles belonging to the members of the union were seen on campus.
But a member of ASUU NEC, who craved
anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the development,
confirmed to our correspondent that the union leaders were converging on
Kano for the meeting.
According to him, though the union has
lost a leading member and an academic, they were mindful of the feelings
of the students and the public over the protracted industrial action.
He noted that all the union’s national
officers as well as other branch chairmen had arrived at the ancient
city for the assembly.
However, attempts by our correspondent
on Friday evening to reach out to the University of Lagos chapter ASUU
Chairman, Dr. Karo Ogbinaka, to confirm the meeting failed, as he did
not pick his calls.
He also did not respond to the text message sent to his telephone.
Ogbinaka had earlier said the academic
community was mourning Iyayi and so was not in a hurry to fix a new date
for the NEC meeting.
The telephone line of the union’s National President, Dr.Nassir Fagge, also did not go through.
President Goodluck Jonathan had led a Federal Government team that met with the leadership of the union penultimate week.
Following the discussion, the FG
reportedly promised to inject N220bn yearly into the public universities
for the next five years. The new offer is to begin from 2014.
A majority of the chapters of the union
had agreed on the suspension of the strike following the fresh
commitment the leadership of ASUU obtained from the FG.
Teachers in the nation’s three but 78
public universities embarked on strike on July 1, 2013 to protest the
failure of the FG to implement the agreement they signed with the
authorities in 2009.
The pact largely centered on greater
funding of the universities, a declaration of a state of emergency in
tertiary education, better wages as well as payment of earned allowances
to lecturers.
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