Senator Chris Ngige: ASUU strike will soon be over.

Yesterday, the Federal Government has expressed hope that the one-month warning strike embarked upon by Academic State Union of Universities, (ASUU) on February 14, 2022, would soon end.

Senator Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, while speaking to newsmen at the end of a conciliation meeting between government and the union yesterday, expressed the hope of an end of the warning strike.

He said ASUU officials agreed to return to their members with offers made by government and revert to him before the week runs out.

“We have only one or two areas that are new. One of the new areas is the renegotiation of the Conditions of Service, which is called the `2009 Agreement’.

“An agreement was reached in 2009 that their Conditions of Service would be reviewed every five years. It was done in 2014.

“We started one in which the former UNILAG Pro- Chancellor, Wale Babalakin, SAN, chaired the committee.

“After Babalakin, Prof. Manzali was in charge and the committee came up with a draft document, proposed by the Federal Ministry of Education and ASUU.

“Today, Manzali’s committee has become defunct because many of the people in the committee are no longer pro-chancellors.” He said.

Ngige said a new team had been constituted to take a second look at that document.

Earlier, the President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, said: “The education sector in Nigeria is in crisis and money is being lost at the primary, secondary and tertiary education levels.”