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The education minister said the government is committed to industrial peace on the nation’s campuses.
The Nigerian government said on Thursday that it is still reviewing the draft agreement between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Yayale Ahmed renegotiation committee submitted in February.
Speaking to journalists in Abuja after a meeting on the renegotiation process, the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, explained that a seven-member committee headed by the ministry’s permanent secretary, Abel Enitan, had been set up to review the draft and present the government’s counter-proposal to the committee for onward transmission to the academic union.
Mr Alausa said the government had yet to sign any agreement with the union, noting that the document from the Yayale Ahmed committee remains a draft.
“We want an agreement where every component is actionable and feasible,” he said.
“We are committed to solving this problem once and for all. What has lingered since the 2009 and 2021 agreements will now be addressed in a sustainable way.”
ASUU had said it was awaiting the outcome of the government’s 28 August (today’s) meeting before it decides on the next line of action, which it said could be a strike.
Mr Alausa said the ‘high-level’ meeting was held on Thursday regarding the renegotiation process and the draft agreement.
He listed attendees to include the Minister of State for Education, Suwaiba Ahmed; the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Muhammad Dingyadi; and Solicitor-General of the Federation and Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Beatrice Jedy-Agba.
Others are the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Abel Enitan; that of Labour, Salihu Usman; head of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Abdullahi Ribadu; head of the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC), Ekpo Nta; and the head of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu.
He said the justice ministry is now fully involved in the entire process to ensure agreements comply with constitutional provisions.
Yayale Ahmed-led committee and History of stalled renegotiations
Mr Ahmed, the pro-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, heads the renegotiation committee inaugurated by the government in October 2024 to renegotiate the 2009 agreement with ASUU.
The Yayale Ahmed committee is the fourth committee to handle the renegotiation since 2017. The government has failed to sign or implement any of the previous drafts by Munzali Jibril in 2021 and Nimi Briggs in 2022.
Between 2017 and 2020, Wale Babalakin, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and the then pro-chancellor of the University of Lagos, led the renegotiation team.
Following his resignation in 2020, Munzali Jibril, an emeritus professor of English and then pro-chancellor for the Federal University, Lafia, Nasarawa State, took over.
With him, the negotiation fared relatively smoothly as his committee turned in a draft agreement in three months —May 2021. But the government neither signed nor implemented the agreement.
When the union embarked on another nationwide strike in 2022, the government constituted yet another committee –this time headed by the late Nimi Briggs, also an emeritus professor.
Mr Briggs-led committee also renegotiated the 2009 agreement and submitted a draft to the government in June 2022.
It was never signed, forcing the 2022 strike action to last until October when an Industrial Court asked the union to suspend the strike after a suit was instituted against the union by the federal government.
ASUU members recently held protests across campuses nationwide, pressing the federal government to address lingering demands.
The lecturers had fixed Tuesday, 26 August, to conduct the nationwide protest across campuses, following a National Executive Council (NEC) meeting held at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, between 16 and 17 August.
The 2009 agreement and the dispute with ASUU
The 2009 agreement is the crux of ASUU’s dispute with the Nigerian government.
The agreement, first signed in 2009, covers Nigerian academics’ conditions of service and salary structure.
The agreement also included a clause that the Nigerian government would spend N1.2 trillion in five tranches of N200 billion annually on the universities from 2009 to 2015. Only N200 billion has so far been released.
It also included autonomy for the universities, which ASUU argues is being eroded with the introduction of a centralised payment platform of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
The agreement also has a period of renegotiation every four years. That renegotiation has not been completed since the first agreement was signed.
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