President, ASUU Meet Monday

Succour may come the way of Nigerian students as the over four months old Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike may come to an end.

    According to a source in the Vice President’s Office, who pleaded anonymity, all hands are on deck to ensure that the universities resume next week.

    The source adds that President Goodluck Jonathan will on Monday meet with the leadership of ASUU in the Presidential Villa. This was part of the resolutions of the meeting between Vice President Namadi Sambo, the Supervising Minister of Education and ASUU leadership last Tuesday.

    The official stated that the Vice President and the Supervising Minister of Education have made head-way in resolving the strike, but the final involvement of the President is to show ASUU that there is commitment from the Federal Government at the highest level.

    The source explained that the President has been fully briefed on steps taken by Vice President Namadi Sambo and the Supervising Minister of Education to get to this point.

    “The President will at next Monday’s meeting present to ASUU leadership the administration’s last concession for them to call off the prolonged strike,” the source said.

     Also, a source at the Presidential Villa noted that if ASUU fails to call off, the Federal Government will then resort to Plan B, which will be to compulsorily open the universities, using the instrumentality of the governing councils and the school managements.

    The Guardian gathered that most governing councils of the universities have started meeting to work out modalities for the compulsory re-opening should ASUU fail to honour the personal request of the President.

    The Guardian also gathered the Supervising Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike and the Vice Chancellors of public universities meet last Monday and discussed the re-opening of the schools. At the meeting, most Vice Chancellors suggested the compulsory re-opening of the schools, should the last ditch efforts fail.

     Report says, security report available to the Presidency may have necessitated this line of action to salvage the universities system from the direction it is facing at present.

  However, in another development, a civil group — Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), has dragged the Federal Government to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights over what it termed ‘serious breach of the obligations’ under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to progressively realise the right to education in accordance with the country’s maximum available resources.

     In a petition sent to the committee through the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navi Pillay, SERAP’s Executive Director, Adetokunbo Mumuni said: “Although the government in 2009 agreed with ASUU to improve the governance structures and funding for the operation of universities across the country to around 26 per cent for the period covering 2009-2020, the terms of the agreement have remained largely unfulfilled. Conditions of service for staff members of the country’s universities remain very poor.”

    “Further, the right of the students to freedom of assembly and association is not fully and effectively respected by the authorities. This fundamental breach is due primarily to the persistent refusal by the government to honour the agreement with members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU),” he stated.

    In the petition, the group also stated that “under international law, Nigeria is required to demonstrate that, in aggregate, the measures being taken are sufficient to realise the right to education for Nigerian children in the shortest possible time using the maximum available resources.”