From Ndubuisi Orji and Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
Speaker of House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, and counsel to the Academic Staff union of Universities (ASUU), have said the prolonged strike will be called off in a couple of days.
Gbajabiamila stated this, yesterday, in Abuja, after meeting with the leadership of the union, led by its President, Emmanuel Osokede. He said President Muhammadu Buhari would make a declaration on the ‘No Work No Pay’ policy of government, which is one of the bone of contention, in the government/ASUU face-off today.
Falana also confirmed the strike would soon be called off after the Court of Appeal in Abuja ordered the striking lecturers to resume academic duties.
“The legal advice that I will give to my clients is confidential. But I can assure you the strike will soon be called off.”
Falana said he would advise his clients accordingly once the certified true copy of the court order of last Friday was made available to him.
“Advising clients to call off a strike is the most difficult aspect of my practice. On one occasion, the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN) and I spent six hours persuading Adams Oshiomhole and other Nigeria Labour Congress members to call off a strike in compliance with a court order. Our advice to ASUU will be based on the court order and other relevant reports. I am reasonably confident that the consultations between the House and the Presidency will yield positive results in the interest of the striking lecturers and the students,” he said.
Gbajabiamila explained that the meeting was “to seal the deal on what has been a long fought, long hard road for everybody both for ASUU, the students and the government. As you would recall, some weeks ago, the House got involved in this crisis and we had long, tough, intense meetings with ASUU.
“We had meetings with those on the government side and we are happy to report that as the result of the consultation and intervention of the House, very significant progress has been made and we are more or less at the of the road. Save for dotting some Is and crossing some Ts.
“We agreed with ASUU and the government on certain things which we took to Mr. President. I have visited the president twice. First time, we made our recommendations with the government shifting some and ASUU shifting some. We spoke with Mr. President. There was one sticking issue which was the issue of ‘no work no pay’. And the president did ask that he would go through the recommendations and would have one more meeting with us which we did on Friday after the budget.
“That meeting was even better than the first one we had with him, and Mr. President had agreed to settle things. I am not going to talk about that now, and that he would disclose tomorrow.”
Gbajabiamila noted that “ beyond that, the other several issues have been taken care of. We were able to make sure what ASUU was asking for in terms of revitalisation, salary, that there has been significant improvement, revitalisation has been provided for in the budget. We made sure of that. The salary structure has been looked at and there has been improvement as well. As you heard, Mr. President say during his budget presentation. He appealed to ASUU to go back to class and that N470 billion has been included in the budget.
“On the issue of UTAS, ASUU and the office of the Accountant General and government have agreed to work together with the chairman, Committee on Tertiary Education to look at the peculiarities of UTAS that is required for the IPPIS payment platform.
“I believe we have covered ground, covered most of the thorny issues and it is basically, what we have agreed with ASUU is basically to put everything on paper and sign off and I believe if we had met yesterday and the papers had been drawn up, ASUU, I am sure would have called of the strike today.