The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, has made an appeal to the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to call off the ongoing nationwide strike. The Minister made the appeal while he was speaking to newsmen about the ongoing nationwide ASUU strike at a conference in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory on Monday.

Stating that the government is doing all in their power to reach an agreement with ASUU, the Minister of Education, emphasised that it was important for the leadership of the union to suspend the industrial action for proper negotiation to take place as any negotiation done under the duress of a strike may lead to coming up with agreements that would not be implementable.

The Minister also disclosed that he would contact the Finance Minister and see to it that the 20 billion Naira fund which has supposedly been approved by the Federal Government is disbursed in the next couple of weeks without further delay.

Below is an extract of the statement of The Minister of Education;

“As the Minister of Education, I feel your pain; I share your concern and I am willing to go to any mile so that together we can change the narrative of this country for the better.” 

“I want to use this opportunity to appeal to ASUU to put off this strike in the name of the country, and in view of what the situation is.”

“Come, let us continue the talk; it is something that we have already started. And I am optimistic that dialogue will produce better results.”

“For us to negotiate under the pressure of strike, we will end up producing the kind of agreement we had in 2009, which almost all stakeholders have agreed is not easily implementable.

“The issue of the release of N20 billion to the universities – on this, let me state in unequivocal terms that I am in touch with the Minister of Finance and that she is very optimistic this will be released in the coming weeks.“