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The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has accused the federal government of lacking the commitment to resolve the dispute with its members so as to bring an end to the strike.
Recall that the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, had accused ASUU of demanding too much.
Keyamo during an interview on Channels TV said, “Should we go and borrow to pay N1.2trillion yearly?
“You cannot allow one sector of the economy to hold you by the jugular and then blackmail you to go and borrow N1.2 trillion for overheads when our total income would be about N6.1 trillion. And you have roads to build, health centres to build, and other sectors to take care of,”
Reacting, ASUU president, Emmanuel Osodeke, in an interview with ThisDay accused the federal government of deliberately delaying the signing of an agreement reached with the union to extend the strike.
Osodeke said. “Nigerians should ask the federal government what they have proposed to pay, what have they done about it? Have we ever mentioned N1.1 trillion any day?
“You see, what we are seeing is that government officials just go to the media and speak every day without having any idea what they are talking about. We are going to respond appropriately.
“We have never mentioned any amount or done any calculation. It is not our duty to do any calculation, we are asking for a salary review after 20 years; it is their duty to state the amount they will be able to pay based on what we proposed and we have done that with two committees- Munzali Jibril and the recent one -Nimi Briggs and we reached an agreement but they went back and they didn’t reach out to us.
See Also: ASUU Strike: Govt Has No Money To Meet ASUU’s Demands – Keyamo
“This time again, they set up a committee headed by Prof. Nimi Briggs and we finished with the committee and they still didn’t get back to us. Keyamo is talking about the figure, but we can’t talk about figures when we have not reached an agreement,” he added.
commenting on Keyamo’s claim that the federal government cannot afford to pay the lecturers a new wage, the ASUU’s president said: “Let me put it this way; if you send a lawyer to represent you in a case, will he go and sign an agreement without getting permission from you?”
Osedake said that the federal government was fully represented in the talks that led to the proposal.
“In that committee, we have officials from the Salaries, Income and Wages Commission; Ministry of Labour and Employment; Ministry of Education, Federal Character Commission; Ministry of Justice; Ministry of Finance, Budget and Planning. They were all present at the negotiation on the draft proposal and nobody complained,” he said.
He said that even if the government had any reservations or disagreements with the draft proposal the best way was to get back to the negotiating table to sort things out, instead of going to the press to play to the gallery.
He said that as of yesterday, the government had not reached out to the union on the matter.
Source: Thisday