Paul Orude Bauchi and Eziomume Solomon, Nnewi

The Federal Government, yesterday, said the  disagreement between it and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) would soon be resolved once to pave the way for public university lecturers to call off their seven-month-old strike

ASUU embarked on strike since March to press home demands for the implementation of the 2009 agreement and rejection of Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) payment platform for universities, arrears of Earned Academic Allowance (EAA), revitalisation funds and other issues.

The union had developed the University Transparency Account System (UTAS) to replace IPPIS.

While answering a question by a corps member during a Town Hall meeting organised for youths in Bauchi, yesterday, on why the Federal Government finds it difficult to honour agreements, Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu said: “A government signed an agreement with ASUU on some conditions that it would pay universities N1.3 trillion and when the agreement was signed, it was not possible for them to be implemented.

“There is nowhere N1.3 trillion will come out from. The problem is on the side of the government because if a government appends its signature to an agreement, it is an agreement.”

The minister said government was not happy or folding its arms as the universities were shut.

“We are not happy that the school calendar is disrupted but the fault is in the government that signed what it knew it could not do. But I assure you we are at the verge of an agreement with ASUU,” he said.

While responding to another question raised by a teacher, Adamu said the president has pledged to be paying anyone who intend to be trained as a teacher immediately after secondary school.

“There is a pension scheme exclusively for teachers. All teachers’ children will be taught free in school. They won’t pay a kobo in the course of training their children.

“There will be special allowances for rural postings, like hardship allowance. There is also preferential to housing scheme for teachers,” he said.

Meanwhile, Academic Frontier Initiative (AFI), a non-partisan organisation, has called on the Federal Government to urgently meet the demands in order to re-open public universities.

Speaking to Daily Sun, yesterday, in Nnewi, AFI National President, Chinedu Onyeizugbe, flanked by his Secretary, Tochukwu Oguegbe, urged the Federal Government not to delay further in attending to the agitations of ASUU; which he said, resulted in continued closure of universities nationwide.

“The Federal Government seems to be fuelling the crisis in the Nigerian educational system. The Federal Government’s continued silence over the ASUU strike is crippling the public university education. How long would members of ASUU and even non-academic staff continue on strike? Is it not yet time for government to be responsible and committed towards the course of the university education by honouring the agreements between it and ASUU? Let the Federal Government address this issue once and for all,” he said.