Nigerian University students and their teachers will soon return to classrooms, the Federal Government has said.
The Federal Government said that tertiary institutions that have been closed since February due to the lingering strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will soon be reopened because of the government’s commitment to resolving contending issues with the university-based unions.
Speaking after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, said the end of the strike is imminent.
The minister, who denied the allegation that the Federal Government was planning to create a different payment table for the unions, said the government had summoned all the relevant agencies, including the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), to brief it on the success so far recorded in resolving the contentious issues that led to the ongoing strike by the unions.
Ngige, while speaking, said the Federal Government is interested in seeing the students going back to school.
He said the meeting of Thursday is expected to look at the progress report by the relevant bodies handling the crisis including NITDA on how far it had gone with the integrity test on the University Transparency and Accountability System (UTAS) which was proposed as an alternative platform by ASUU and the University Peculiar Personnel and Payroll System (U3PS) proposed by SSANU and NASU.