Striking members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) have suspended the strike action, embarked upon five weeks ago, grounding the entire university system.

In calling off the strike, they gave the federal government further conditions to ensure full implementation of their demands on or before the end of October, 2017.

The suspension followed series of meeting with stakeholders in the education sector, particularly the federal ministry of education as well as the ministry of labour and employment.

ASUU President, Biodun Ogunyemi who made the announcement in Abuja, shortly after a Monday meeting with the minister of labour and employment, Chris Ngige, said universities are expected to resume on the 19th of September after the union members must have met at their branch levels.

Federal government was forced to bow to ASUU's terms which culminated in the suspension of the strike, after stakeholders in the sector had a stormy meeting to reappraise all the demands made by ASUU.

One of the major concession from government was to honour the 2009 agreement the government had with ASUU, by releasing the sum of N220 billion not later than October 2017.

The ASUU President admitted that the proposals made by the government were concrete for the time being.

Another condition for suspending the strike was the pledge by government to set up the National Universities Pension Commission.

According to him, most of ASUU’s demands that were discussed during the meeting emanated from the 2009 agreement and the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding the university teachers had with the federal government, saying  it was important that solutions were found to these pending problems.

Report by Nnabuchi Nnabuchi