Former President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday said his administration had ended a four-month-old strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) within 24 hours.
Mr Jonathan disclosed this at the 70th birthday celebration of the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah, organised by The Kukah Centre in Abuja.
The former president said, “The society we are managing is complex, now we are talking about ASUU strike, during my time too, ASUU had four months of strike, different committees were meeting and meeting and nothing was working. I said how can our children stay out of school for four months? So I had to call a meeting of all the leadership of ASUU.
“I presided over the meeting with my vice president, the Attorney General was there, I said that that night we must solve the problem. The Attorney General was there, Secretary to the Government of the Federation was there, the ministers of education were there, the labor ministers were there the finance ministers, everybody that has to do with it.
“And I thought that my being there would help us to do things quickly. But we spent the whole night, before we finished on like 5:30am Before we concluded and the strike was called off, so there were issues.”
ASUU began a one-month warning strike on February 14, 2022, and extended it four times after the Federal Government failed to meet up with its demands.
Some of the demands of ASUU include: revitalisation of public universities, earned academic allowances and the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability.
The Federal Government agreed to inject a total of N1.3 trillion into public universities, both state and federal, in six tranches, starting in 2013 after the union decried the deplorable state of the institutions.
In 2013, the government was to release N200 billion and release N220 billion each year for another five years.
After releasing the first tranche, the government stopped releasing the funds. In 2017, it, however, released N20 billion. In 2020, it promised to release N25 billion.
ASUU rejected the offer, insisting on N110 billion, which is 50 percent of the N220 billion that it demanded, but the government declined, citing paucity of funds.
