Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, has asked the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to discuss all issues concerning the ongoing strike with the ministry of education.
The renegotiation committee delegation was led by Nimi Briggs, its chairman and pro-chancellor of Alex Ekwueme Federal University in Ebonyi State.
In a statement by Patience Onuobia, spokesperson of the ministry of labour, Ngige explained that he has been pushing to see that everything contained in the 2020 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) reached with the government was implemented.
He said, “I started pushing to see that things were done. What the Munzali committee came up with is a proposal. Both Munzali and ASUU did not sign. At our last meeting in February before ASUU proceeded on strike, we said everyone should go back to his principal,” he said.
”I asked education several times what they had done with the document. We later got information on areas of disagreement. There is nothing wrong with that. It is bound to happen. I told ASUU to put up a committee; they said Munzali committee had expired.
“As a conciliator, I have to make use of the labour instruments at my disposal. The bosses in the federal ministry of education do not feel the strike. There are things that are above me. 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. There are many ways to do so.
“If you go to the labour act there is something called picketing. You can picket; strike is an ultimate thing. Picketing means that you can stay at the corridor, clapping or singing. Workers are permitted to do so. But every time there is a disagreement, it is strike.
“It is [affecting] the children and some of us parents that have our children in public schools. I have my children in public universities, including those on my foundation’s scholarship and sponsorship. So, I am a parent. I feel it. I didn’t send my children to Igbinedion or Afe Babalola or Cambridge.”