Impending strike: Minister accuses ASUU of blackmail
The Minister of Labor and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has accused university teachers under the aegis of the Academi Staff Union of Universities of whipping up sentiments against the Federal Government to attract sympathy to its planned strike.
Dr. Ngige said the government had been implementing the Memorandum of Action signed in 2020 with the leadership of ASUU.
The spoke in reaction to the lecturers’ threat to throw public universities into another round of strike to protest the yet-to-be met demands.
The lecturers said the full implementation of the 2009 agreement is what can avert the strike. Ngige said the government released N70 billion in 2021 for both the Revitalization of Public Universities (N30 billion) and Earned Academic Allowances (N40 billion) to demonstrate commitment to the MoA implementation.
He said: “It is not true.
“They have taken their Earned Academic Allowances for 2021.
“It was mainstreamed in the budget of 2021 and they got it.
“We paid N22.72 billion, which was mainstreamed in the 2021 budget.
“And they have collected the one of 2020 where they got N40 billion and shared it between them and other unions.
“They got it in January 2021.
“When they called off their strike in December 2020, the release of funds was one of the agreements.
“They were paid N40 billion and another N30 billion for Revitalization of Public Universities during the first quarter of 2021, bringing the total to N70 billion.
“If they say the EAA is not in the 2022 Budget, why don’t they allow the government to do a Supplementary Budget?
“There is a parameter that we use to calculate it.
“That parameter changes every year and it is the Budget Office that is calculating it.
“Maybe by March the Budget Office would have known what the parameter will be and put it in the 2022 supplementary budget.
“The EAA they got in 2021 was in the supplementary budget.
“We are implementing the MoA.
“We have been implementing it religiously.
“When they (ASUU) are talking like that, I don’t like it because …