After a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, the Federal Government and Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) agreed to resolve all contentions to avoid a strike.
The parties also agreed to begin a communication process to prevent the union’s planned industrial actions.
At around 4:30 p.m., the parties met behind closed doors at the ministry’s headquarters in Abuja.
The discussion, which lasted over two hours, featured in attendance the two ministers handling education, Tahir Mamman and Yusuf Sununu, as well as other top officials in the ministry in the federal government’s team.
ASUU president Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, who led the union’s team, told journalists following the meeting that the negotiation process had begun while hoping that the federal government would follow up on what had been agreed on.
“We have discussions on all the issues, and we have given assignments to some people to look at and agree on the way forward.”
On the two-week ultimatum issued by the union, Mr Osodeke said they would go back and give the details of the meeting to their members.
“What is important is that we have started the process and our prayers is that we resolve it for the interest of our young men and the interest of the nation .
“The government has spent one year in office and we have not been called for any formal meeting. Today, we are having the first formal meeting.
“There is a process we have started, and we are going to set deadlines, we are going to meet to look at what has been done on those issues, and we hope the process will continue,” he said.
On his part, Mr Mamman said that consultations would commence immediately to overcome the problems bedevilling education.
“We’ve had a very good meeting and a very productive one. We’ve discussed progress on how to ensure that the system works well and lots of the issues we talked about are those that we inherited and some ongoing.
“We discussed them all without exception, and we have a consensus on the way forward.
“A lot of consultations will still continue on some information we don’t have, which are beyond the scope of the ministry and which will require us to connect with our colleagues in other ministries.
“But, the most important thing is that we had a very good meeting and agreed to continue with the consultations to overcome the problems bedevilling education in Nigeria,” he said.
It should be noted that ASUU had threatened to go on strike nationwide due to the federal government’s refusal to meet its demands.
ASUU had given the government a two-week deadline to meet all outstanding demands from the union.
Some of the points of disagreement include removal from IPPIS, renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, the entire backlog of Earned Academic Allowance (EAA), and all unpaid salaries, among others.