After weeks of engagements with the Federal Government to bring to an end, the ongoing strike by lecturers, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), yesterday walked-out from the sixth meeting aimed at ending negotiations and suspension of the 43 days’ strike.

 All hope was, however, dashed when ASUU led by its national President, Biodun Ogunyemi staged a walk-out from the meeting presided over by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, even as the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, was absent at the meeting. Although the ASUU President declined comments on why they walked out of the meeting that lasted two hours, no member of the Federal Government delegation was around as at this time.

 At the start of the meeting before the walkout, Ngige had told the lecturers that he hoped a consensus on most of the issues was reached at the end of the meeting. He assured the union that attention would be paid to three critical demands, which were salary shortfall, university revitalisation and earned allowances of lecturers. After ASUU’s walkout, Ngige maintained that negotiations were still ongoing and that the Federal Government would try and meet up with ASUU’s demands before Christmas, so as to allow affected University students resume school in January.

 The university lecturers embarked on an indefinite strike on November 4, demanding improved funding of universities and implementation of previous agreements with the government. Meanwhile, an earlier meeting between the striking Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) and the Federal Government, ended in a deadlock.

The meeting, which lasted for five hours on Monday, was chaired by the permanent secretary of the ministry of education, Sonny Echonu. According to the ASUP President, Usman Dutse, Polytechnic lecturers were not pleased with the body language of government which seems to be proposing second week of January 2019 for the continuation of the meeting. ASUP had resumed strike on December 12, 2018 following what it described as government’s failure to keep to agreements reached on ‘NEEDS’ assessment, earned academic allowance among others