The President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari has received the House of Representatives’ report on its ongoing intervention efforts in the protracted strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), promising to study and meet the legislators again.
Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila who is the Speaker of the House of Representatives made this disclosure while speaking to State House correspondents after the meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that the House of Representatives had last Thursday held a closed-door meeting with the leadership of ASUU and the representatives of the federal government in Abuja in a bid to end the almost eight-month-old industrial action.
According to Gbajabiamila, the President received their report and requested a few days to study it, adding that another meeting would be convened either Thursday or Friday.
He said, ‘We came here for one reason and one reason only: after a series of engagements with ASUU and with people on the executive side, we’ve been able to come to some kind of decision, on our part, and recommendations to be made to Mr. President for his approval.
‘That’s why we’re here because, as you know, what’s on the front burner today, beyond the politics, is our universities, our lecturers, and our children who are out of school, and the House of Representatives decided to step in at that point four weeks ago.’
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He went further went on to add; ‘We’ve had a series of meetings that lasted hours and we came to discuss with Mr. President about our recommendations. That’s why we’re here.
‘Mr. President, as usual, had a very good listening ear and he took the report of the House, accepted it, we discussed it at length, the details of the report, and he wanted to go through them himself and he’ll get back to us. We have another meeting on Thursday, between our good selves and Mr. President, for his final decision’, he said.
Asked if he thought there was any hope of succeeding, he answered in the affirmative.
‘Oh, absolutely very hopeful. We had a good engagement, very positive response. He asked us a couple of questions in some grey areas, which we clarified, and he accepted the report and he wanted a couple of days to go through it,’ he said.
Asked if the House of Representatives had scheduled more meetings with ASUU, he said ‘no. We’re done with our meetings with ASUU. We’ve done our reports and we’ve made our recommendations.
‘All that is left now, as we speak, is for us to come back here on Thursday, maybe Friday, in the next couple of days for Mr. President. He wants to digest the report in detail and we won’t know anything until Thursday or Friday’, he said.
Meanwhile, President Buhari has said corruption in the education sector and frequent strikes by ASUU are undermining the federal government’s investment in the sector.
He said critics downplay funding by focusing only on budgetary allocations and urged a more comprehensive re-evaluation of expenditure.
The president, who said this at the opening of the fourth national summit on “Diminishing Corruption in the Public Sector” at the State House, Abuja, yesterday, said measuring financing of education sector should include total education budget of each year by both federal and state governments and other financial commitments in their totality.
According to a statement by the spokesman to President Buhari, Femi Adesina, the Summit was organised by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Office of Secretary to Government of the Federation (OSGF) and Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB).