ASUU: The Nigerian government sets up a new group to talk with unions.

The Nigerian government announced on Tuesday that it has set up and started working with a new committee to "accelerate ongoing discus...

The Nigerian government announced on Tuesday that it has set up and started working with a new committee to "accelerate ongoing discussions" with unions based in tertiary schools. This includes ASUU, whose two-week ultimatum ends in six days.


The pro-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Yayale Ahmed, will be in charge of the new group, which is called the Federal Government Tertiary Institutions Expanded Negotiation group.
The Nigerian government announced on Tuesday that it has set up and started working with a new committee to "accelerate ongoing discussions" with unions based in tertiary schools. This includes ASUU, whose two-week ultimatum ends in six days.

The pro-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Yayale Ahmed, will be in charge of the new group, which is called the Federal Government Tertiary Institutions Expanded Negotiation group.According to the statement, Mr. Alausa asked all academic and non-academic groups to work together fully and quickly to meet the committee's needs.

The minister said that President Bola Tinubu fully supports the process and has made it clear that all talks must be finished quickly, fairly, and with respect for each other. "President Tinubu told us that all of our kids had to be in school." He was quoted as saying, "This is new hope in action."

He also thanked the unions for their patience and hard work while the government works on a final, all-encompassing deal.

This comes after ASUU told its members to get ready for a strike because its two-week deadline is almost up.




A looming strike

It's been a week since ASUU gave the government two weeks to meet its requests. The union said on Monday that seven days after the deadline, there has been no progress. So, it told its people to get ready for a strike.

But now the education ministry says it is taking steps to make sure that talks with ASUU and other workers' unions in universities, polytechnics, and schools of education end.

In a statement, the ministry said that the new committee would bring all the negotiation processes together under one unified framework that would reflect institutional memory and include everyone in the field.

New committee

Mr. Alausa said that the Yayale-Ahmed expanded committee will work with all unions to reach a full and long-lasting deal.

This was said by Mr. Alausa while he was speaking with Mohammed Dingyadi, Minister of Labour and Employment, and Suwaiba Ahmed, a professor and Minister of State for Education.

"Each member of the committee was carefully picked to represent a different part of the education field so that no one is left out," he said.

According to Mr. Alausa, the group has been given a professional and well-equipped secretariat that will help it do its job well.

Mr. Ahmed spoke for the committee and promised that it would do its job in an open, honest, and inclusive way, listening to everyone, building trust, and working towards agreements that promote industrial harmony and strengthen the country's tertiary institutions.

He promised that the group would not only negotiate, but also make sure that the agreements and suggestions they come up with are useful, reasonable, and able to keep the peace and productivity in the education sector for a long time.A lot of groups, not much progress
At least six committees have been set up by the government to renegotiate the deals made with university-based unions in 2009. This is the seventh.

The government has never actually put the drafts made by the groups into action; instead, they make more committees.

That 2009 deal has been the source of disagreement between the government and unions at universities. The agreement spells out the terms of the researchers' jobs, their pay, and their universities' freedom.


In August, Mr. Alausa, the minister of education, set up a group led by Abel Enitan, the permanent secretary of the ministry, to look into the draft agreement that ASUU and the Yayale Ahmed renegotiation committee sent in February.

The late emeritus professor Nimi Briggs led the renegotiation group in 2022 before Mr. Ahmed. They made a draft that the government never signed or used.

The group before Mr. Briggs was led by Munzali Jibrin in 2021, and they also made a draft that was never signed.

Before them both, Wale Babalakin led the group from 2017 until 2020, when he quit.

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