ASUU strike: Reps leadership to meet Buhari on his return from UNGA

ABUJA – Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has dropped the hint of a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, on his return from the United Nations General Assembly in New York on resolutions reached with the union in Abuja yesterday .

Gbajabiamila and other principal officers of the House, who met with ASUU for hours, said: “We have been here for hours now deliberating on issues concerning the ongoing ASUU strike. We have covered good ground.
Let me put it this way and we have made very good progress. As I said earlier, ours is to engage directly with ASUU as an independent arm of government to find out exactly the details and how solutions can be offered. As they say, two heads are better than.

“Now that the legislature has come in, we are very hopeful, based on our deliberations over the past five hours, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. So, I thank them again for making this time in the interest of our students.
There are mainly seven areas where ASUU has presented what we consider the requisites for them to go back to class. We looked at those areas and we more or less agreed on certain things.

”We have asked that NITDA, Accountant General and Auditor General and the Wages and Salaries Commission be invited. Unfortunately, it is too late to invite them tomorrow because the letters cannot go out until tomorrow.
They will be invited to meet with the leadership on Thursday so that we can dot the ‘i’ and cross the ‘t’. Once this is done, the leadership of this House will await the return of Mr. President of the ongoing UN General Assembly and we will Mr. President meets and lays before him the agreement made by this arm of the government.

“We are hopeful and believe that Mr. President will buy into the agreement and with that I believe this matter will be brought to a quick end. Meanwhile, between and when Mr. President come, ASUU itself will go back to its members with the decisions we reached today to get their buy-in.
I don’t believe there is a problem or a problem out of what we discussed.”

On his part, ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, said: “I also want to thank the speaker and members of the House for this intervention.

“I think this is a good development and we are waiting for what they will send us that can keep our members waiting. I believe that this issue will be resolved in the near future.”