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The Federal Government has said it will utilise voluntary conciliation as a solution to the lingering strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, and other university-based unions.
This was stated by Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, on Tuesday during a 3-day capacity-building workshop on International Labour Standards and Dispute Resolution in Nigeria in Abuja.
He said that voluntary conciliation was adopted instead of arbitration in order to hasten the resolution process with the university teachers.
The Minister, during the event hosted by the Industrial Arbitration Panel, IAP, in collaboration with the International Labour Organisations, ILO, said that the issue would have been taken to the IAP or National Industrial Court of Nigeria, NICN.
He said, “But I used my discretion to weigh the situation to know if it would cause more delay in the resolution of the dispute in a court process.
“ASUU had embarked on strike on February 14 and voluntary conciliation started on February 22 and subsequently, on March 1 citing that by the second meeting, most of the issues arising from the 2020 Memorandum of Action (MOA) signed between ASUU and the Ministry of Education with other government agencies involved, were conciliated, leaving out only two.
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“The two outstanding issues were the conditions of service, which according to the 2009 Agreement would be reviewed every four years.
“The last review was in 2013 and we started the review in 2018 under Wale Babalakin (SAN) as the chairman of the renegotiation committee. We could not conclude because Babalakin left.
“A new committee headed by Munzali came. Munzali finished his work and put in his report at the Federal Ministry of Education.”
He stressed that all the committees including the previous Onosode committee were all internal committees of the Ministry of Education.
Ngige added, “The major issue here is salary and wage review. That is where they are before ASUU embarked on strike,’’ he said, also adding that a strike triggers the content of the Trade Dispute Act (TDA) on how to resolve the industrial action.
“If a party wants us to transmit a matter back to them to have a second look, you assist them. That is what you call voluntary conciliation”.
Source: Nairametrics