ASUU: Ngige misinforming Buhari about strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has accused the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, of misinforming President Muhammadu Buhari on its ongoing strike.

ASUU said President Buhari would not have ordered the university lecturers to resume back to work if he had been briefed on the outcomes of the negotiation by the Ministry of Education.

The President had in a statement issued on Monday by his spokesperson, Garba Shehu, told the striking lecturers to consider the future generation and end their ongoing strike.

“We hope that ASUU will sympathise with the people on the prolonged strike. Truly, enough is enough for keeping students at home. Don’t hurt the next generation for goodness sake,” Buhari had said.

However, the ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, while speaking on Channels Television programme, Sunrise Daily, on Thursday, said the union did not demand N1.2 trillion or N2.4 trillion to end its ongoing industrial action.

Osodeke said: “If the President had been properly briefed by the committee through the Minister of Education, I don’t think the President would have said, ‘enough is enough’. He would have said go to your class while we are negotiating.

“We are not aware of where their so-called figure arrived from. In all our agreements and discussions, we didn’t talk about 1.2 trillion or 2.4 trillion, or whatever. We didn’t.

“We didn’t calculate the quantum of what we would need. We calculated what each member of our union will earn.

“If this man who is telling you this figure can tell a lie that ASUU chased out his members from the negotiation table, why would he not tell a lie about the figure?

“The ministry (Labour and Employment) is churning out fake figures. We negotiated with the Ministry of Education. So, wherever they got the documents is their business,” the ASUU President stated.

ASUU and other unions in public universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, have been on industrial action for over five months over alleged failure of the Federal Government to meet their demands.

The unions are demanding funding of the revitalisation fund, earned allowances, implementation of the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) scheme, as well as promotion arrears.

Other demands are the renegotiation of 2009 ASUU-FG Agreement, and the resolution of inconsistency in the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), among others.

The Star