The president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU), has said the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, has been misinforming President Muhammadu Buhari on the union’s strike.
Recall that on July 11, Buhari urged the union to rethink its current strike because it is negatively affecting parents and students.
Osodeke, who spoke during a television programme yesterday, however, said the president would not have made such a comment if he had been properly informed.
According to the ASUU president, the union is unaware of the sum that the federal government is claiming is required to end the strike when it comes to negotiations.
Concerning the negotiation, the ASUU president said the union is not aware of the figure being circulated by the Federal Government as the amount needed to resolve the strike. “If the president had been properly briefed by the committee through the minister of education, I don’t think the president would have said enough is enough, go to your class while we are negotiating”, he stated.
“It is the Labour Minister and his group that would have gone to the president to tell him that if we chase out his people, we refuse salary. We are not aware of where their so-called figure arrives from. In all our agreement and discussion, we didn’t talk about 1.2 trillion or 2.4 trillion, or whatever. We didn’t. We didn’t calculate the quantum of what we would need. We calculated what each member of our union will earn.
“If this man who is telling you this figure can tell a lie that ASUU chased out his members from the negotiation table, why would he not tell a lie about the figure? The ministry is churning out fake figures. We negotiated with the Ministry of Education; so wherever they got the documents is their business”.
