The federal government has expressed optimism that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU’s) strike will end soon, declaring it was surprised by the action of the lecturers who embarked on industrial action on February 14.
Chris Ngige, the minister of labour and employment disclosed this on Wednesday, June 22. He said the government was surprised ASUU disproved the understanding and assurances it gave through the Nigerian Inter-Religious Council, NIREC.
Ngige said he thought the public university lecturers and their employer, the ministry of education, would have resolved the areas of disputes within days.
“I sincerely thought ASUU and the Ministry of Education would have resolved the issues, which hopefully are not major areas of dispute, warranting industrial action. To my surprise, I came back, and the strike is still on. Be that as it may, it is the mandate of my Ministry to apprehend industrial disputes wherever they occur and we have apprehended this.
“From this negotiation, we are having today, ASUU will appreciate that government means no harm. This is because even if there are still lapses in the implementation of the agreement, they are not such that will lead to industrial action. To that extent, we have to do everything possible to resolve this.
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“It is my mandate to apprehend industrial disputes and this has been apprehended, so we can discuss, and later expand to what is called tripartite plus meeting, involving members of NIREC who are top religious and traditional rulers, we cannot push aside. And that is as soon as we are done and agree on issues here,” he said.
However, the striking lecturers have maintained that the ongoing strike would continue until the federal government expresses its readiness to meet the union’s demands, particularly the assumption of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS) as a payment platform as against the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system (IPPIS) being adopted by the government.
Recall that ASUU has been on industrial action since February 14, when the union issued a 30-day warning strike to the federal government to implement what was agreed upon by both parties in their 2009 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the renegotiated Memorandum of Action (MoA) of 2020.
