The North’s apex socio-cultural organization, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has offered to mediate in the stalemated negotiations between the federal government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to end the lecturers’ strike..

The stalemated negotiations had resulted in public universities being shut down since last February.

ACF, in a statement by its secretary general, Murtala Aliyu on Thursday, asks both ASUU and federal government to consider further dialogue on alternative terms to end the lecturers’ strike.

According to the organization, both bodies need to urgently change their approaches and end the crisis, which it believes had set Nigerian universities behind.

RELATED: Insecurity: Buhari Indicts Military for Not Doing Enough

ACF said frequency of strikes by lecturers in public universities is affecting the quality of their products, and holding Nigerians to ransom.

Meanwhile, leader of federal government’s negotiating team with ASUU, Senator Chris Ngige, has said that only ASUU could determine how long the lecturers’ strike would last.

Ngige speaking on a television programme said federal government had tried its best to address the demands of ASUU.

The labour minister said ASUU leaders should stop grandstanding and threatening the nation, consider the plight of students, and return to the negotiating table with the committee set up to renegotiate the 2009 agreement.

READ NEXT: Obasanjo Wants Community Policing Upgraded To State Police