By Uche Mbah
Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige has said the Federal Government will begin to implement the agreement reached with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, by paying their members outstanding debts owed them.
Ngige said though he is yet to be officially informed by ASUU about their impending strike and 22 days ultimatum, the Government would not watch the union go on strike.
Ngige spoke on Politics Today, a current affairs programme on Channels Television monitored in Lagos.
“The strike will not happen. For one, I know that the fund to pay with is there and the Ministry of Education has assured me that by Wednesday they would emanate letters to make sure that the disbursement reaches the accounts of the various universities. We are not paying the unions directly, it will get to the universities’ accounts.
“I will have a meeting with the Minister of State for Education who is the one in charge of the affairs now because the main Minister (Adamu Adamu) is overseas on health grounds. I will evaluate the situation with him and we would make sure that the disbursement goes on.”
This Magazine reported that ASUU gave the Federal Government a 21-day because it failed to implement the agreement reached with it.
President of ASUU, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, had at a press conference, Monday, threatened to return to the trenches because FG reneged on their own part of the agreement reached by them.
Last year, ASUU had embarked on strike for the same reason of University Funding as well as the integrated parole system. “As far as we are concerned, we have hit the ground running, making contacts with their real employers – the direct employers of university teachers, which is the Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission,” Ngige said.
On the issue of the revitalisation fund, Ngige said, “The fund is ready. The fund is in the account of the National Universities Commission and the Ministry of Education. They were doing what they called auditing of the earlier disbursed funds.
“Universities were supposed to retire the earlier funds given to them. As of the last meeting, 11 universities had not satisfactorily done that and, therefore, we gave a timeframe of two weeks to get those universities to conform and they would release the money.”
He said that they paid what was agreed with ASUU. According to him, the bone of contention is subsequent payment.“The other one had been paid (between) January and February. This is now the second charge that is due in the agreement,” he added.
“I am not trying to make a case for the Ministry of Education and NUC (on) why they should not do what they are supposed to do but I know that before the next two weeks, we can sort out some of those low-hanging fruits. There are no problems because the money is already there,” Ngige said.
“Don’t buy everything hook, line and sinker that the Federal Government is not doing anything. If it was a system that we didn’t want to use at all from Day 1, we would have said it and we would not waste anybody’s time. But this Government believes in home-grown things; we believe in local content. This is part of our local content so that we can save foreign exchange for the country.”
