The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, should not be participating in the discussions between the government and the union because he has filed a lawsuit, according to Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, the National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities.
On Tuesday, Osodeke said this during an appearance on Channels Television. He said that Ngige had forfeited his role as a mediator and that he was actually the one who wrote to the government requesting that the academics be paid half their salary.
The ASUU president continued by saying the union’s protests will be put to rest in the best interests of the nation, parents, and students.
He remarked, “He (Ngige) went to court, which indicates he has forfeited his conciliator’s role. He has no further authority as a conciliator after taking this matter to the Industrial Court, but he is still interfering. Currently, the Labour Minister has nothing to do with the situation and has no role to play.
He is an intrusion. He has outgrown being a conciliator, if that is what we are calling him.
And we discovered that he, and not the finance minister, was the one who directly requested that they cease paying us. Just a personal matter. We are shocked since after filing a lawsuit, he should technically have no options left. He shouldn’t be dealing with that which we do.
However, much to our surprise, the Accountant General Office chose to contribute what has been termed to as half. It’s quite disappointing that lecturers earning the same pay scale received varied amounts, such as N200,000, N180,000, N90,000, and so on.
The first wage sent to union members since the start of the strike was the part payment, according to the ASUU president.
“The crucial point that has to be addressed is whether a Minister of Labor may provide instructions to a Minister of Finance. No, is the response. Since the NUC oversees our activities and we are governed by the Ministry of Education, we assumed that the Minister of Education could issue such a direction.
The Speaker and the Minister of Education, under whose leadership we operate, are the ones who intervened and convinced us to call off the strike over the claim that, among other things, they would pay the backlog in our salary since ASUU is unique from other unions, he added.
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