The Academic Staff Union of Universities #ASUU has issued new conditions to the Federal Government’s negotiating team for it to end its five-month strike.

Our correspondent gathered that the union held its executive meeting Sunday but kept mute after the meeting.

Before now, the leadership of the union had engaged in a 13-hour marathon meeting with the government delegation led by President Goodluck Jonathan himself in Abuja between Monday and Tuesday.

ASUU, at the meeting, promised to take the message to its members across the country. The meeting was to collate feedback from its various chapters on the fresh offer by the Federal Government.

Though it was generally perceived that both ASUU and the Federal Government achieved breakthrough in negotiation for the first time after the lengthy meeting with the President, it was learnt that the lecturers might not be in a hurry to go back to class.

Investigation revealed that the silence by ASUU may be to keep to the assurance it gave to President Jonathan that the body would first brief him on the outcome of its NEC meeting before making it public.

But we authoritatively gathered that meeting the president gain was to strengthen the previous agreement with the president.

A source in the meeting told our correspondent that the union has come up with some new dimensions to ensure that strike ends in the history of Nigerian universities.

The source threatened that the lecturers would no resume work if their salary was not released.

It was gathered that Federal Government has refused to pay the lecturere since the strike began in July 1.

The source said: “What we agreed on in summary was that the Federal Government must pay all our outstanding salary from June to November. We also agreed that the implementation of the new agreement must begin this year.

“With that, the FG must release the earlier promised N130 billion for both the allowances and university restructuring fund. Since the minister of finance had assured in the previous meeting that the fund were ready, we hope that will no longer delay resumption.”

Earlier, members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities have given the Federal Government certain conditions to be met before the union could call off its four-month old strike.

Part of this condition, it was learnt, is that all federal parastatals in charge of fund, labour, and education must sign the agreement purportedly reached between its leadership and the Federal Government on Tuesday.

A prominent member of the union, who craved anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on behalf of the body, noted that doing this would give the association the confidence that “the Federal Government knows what it is doing when it signed the agreement.”

In the recent development, ASUU maintained sealed lips on the outcome of its National Executive Committee meeting held in, Kano, over the weekend.

ASUU had penultimate Tuesday cancelled its earlier scheduled NEC meeting in Kano due to the death of its former president, Prof. Festus Iyayi.

Iyayi died when the vehicle he was travelling with other national officers from Benin to Kano got involved in a crash with the convoy of Kogi Governor, Idris Wada.

Reference: goldmyne.tv