At long last, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has agreed to call of the strike action, which started some eight months ago.
The leadership of the union, we gathered, reached the consensus during a meeting with the government team led by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, in Abuja, on Friday. At the meeting too, the government pledged to pay N40 billion as the Earned Allowance and N30bn for the revitalisation of the university system bringing the total payment to N70 billion.
It was also agreed that the government will settle the arrears of salaries of the lecturers before December 31. This is happening one week after the Federal Government accepted the demand by the ASUU that they be exempted from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System pending the approval of their proposed payment system, the University Transparency and Accountability Solution.
ASUU is expected to report the agreement to its organs and then communicate their decision to the government after which a date for the calling off of the strike would be announced.
