Strong indications have emerged that the Academic Staff Union of Universities has suspended its lingering industrial action.
The Network gathered on good authority that the decision to suspend the eight month old industrial action was reached at the end of the union’s National Executive Council meeting at its Secretariat in Abuja.
Members of NEC who attended the meeting include the chairmen of the state chapters and members of the national executive of the union.
A source confided in the Network that the union resolved to call of the strike in the meeting which started on Thursday and dragged into the early hours of Friday.
The NEC meeting was called to determine the union’s position on the strike after its state branches met on the Court of Appeal ruling last week which ordered ASUU to suspend its strike before its appeal of the ruling ordering lecturers to resume work could be heard.
The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, had given the hint that the lingering strike by the union will soon be called off.
Osodeke had said during a meeting of the lecturers’s union and the leadership of the House òf Representatives on Sunday that the strike will be called off in days.
“In a few days, we will put this strike to an end,”
“For the first time, we have seen light at the end of the tunnel.” Osodeke said
Also, the Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, briefed the leadership of ASUU about his meetings with President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said that it was his expectation that the strike would be called off “in a matter of days.”
ASUU had on February 14, 2022, embarked on strike to press home their unresolved demands to the federal government.
Some of the lecturers’ demands include funding for the revitalisation of public universities out at N1.1 trillion, payment of earned academic allowances, and adoption of the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) as a preferred payment option, instead of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) and payment of promotion arrears.