Following a meeting between the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, and the Federal Government, Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige on Monday said the government was not pleased with the approach being used by the ASUU, to pursue its demands.
Recall that ASUU has been strike since February 14th, over the Federal Government’s alleged failure to address the demands of the body.
The Labour minister urged ASUU to get a better way of pressurizing the Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission, NUC, to hasten action on the implementation of agreements reached with the government rather than resulting to strike.
“I am not Minister of Education. I cannot go to the Education Minister and dictate to him how to run his place. But I told ASUU that you should be bombarding them at the Federal Ministry of Education for this to be moved forward,” he said.
“There are many ways to do so. If you go to the labour act, there is something called picketing. You can picket. The strike is an ultimate thing. Picketing means that you can stay in the corridor, clapping or singing. Workers are permitted to do so”.
Ngige further accused the Education ministry of not doing enough as the ongoing strike does not have any effect on them.
“But I am tired of every time there is a disagreement, it is a strike. And the bosses in the Federal Ministry of Education don’t feel the strike. It is the children and some of us parents that have our children in public schools.”
He added that he supports ASUU and their unions as the body wants a renegotiation of their conditions of service, which is the main thing in the proposal by the previous Committee.
He also ask the committee to ensure that it concludes its own part of the Memorandum of Action, MoA within six weeks.
