By Akinwale Kasali
Minister for Labour, Employment and Productivity, Chris Ngige, has taken a swipe on University Lecturers, saying they are at home playing Ludo games and other Indoor games when they should be busy doing educational researcher, unraveling new theories and methodologies, like their Colleagues elsewhere. And, yet, he said, they are paid salaries.
But Ngige’s statement has attracted a rebuke   from the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU.
The Minister, had challenged them to get busy and not stay home playing ludo and other indoor games after receiving salaries, instead of engaging in research activities that would lead to new drugs and medical equipment to combat the raging COVID-19 Pandemic.
The Union called on the Federal Government not to see the payment of their February and March salaries as a favour, as it is their legitimate rights and government’s duty to meet its obligations to its workers.
The union said: “Government should have been ashamed to have unlawfully and wickedly withheld members’ salaries and paid only two out of three in the month May on account of disagreement over their enrollment into the newly introduced Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).”
The Chairman of ASUU, University of Lagos(UNILAG), Akoka branch, Dele Ashiru, reacting to these assertions on behalf of ASUU national, said it is disheartening that a serving minister whose mandate is to ensure peace and harmony in the labour sector and who also superintendent over the government’s failed promises to develop the university education could now be acussing lecturers of idleness while appraising self for paying salaries.
According to him, Ngige’s statement does not only show that he is not only fueling crisis, but he also lacks knowledge of what the lecturers are actually doing during this COVID-19.
Ashiru said the minister should know that Nigerian academics are part of frontliners in the fight against COVID-19 in the country.
He said so many researches had been carried out in Nigerian ivory towers during this time of pandemic including the UNILAG team who has just developed a ventilator.
He, however, asked the minister to name any of the discoveries by Nigerians including scholars for COVID-19 or from those before now that Nigeria’s government had adopted let alone supported or encouraged.
