#Updated: ASUU agreed to call off strike Dec 9 —Ngige
The Federal Government has fired back at ASUU, claims that the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi has delivered wrong information to the public.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, revealed that ASUU agreed at their last meeting with the government team on November 27 to call off their nine-month-old strike before December 9.
Nggie said “The truth of the matter is that a ‘gentleman agreement’ was reached at the last meeting in which ASUU agreed to call off the strike before December 9, 2020, and the Minister, in turn, agreed that once the strike is called off, he would get a presidential waiver for ASUU to be paid the remainder of their salaries on or before December 9,” Ngige stated.
This was contained in a statement from Ngige media office on Tuesday, titled, ‘We have kept our promises to ASUU-FG’.
“It is, therefore, unbelievable that ASUU President claimed that government agreed to pay outright the entire money of the period of the strike to them, even for staying at home and refusing to do either virtual teaching or research.”
The government said the outstanding salaries to ASUU was for July, August, September and October “as no federal public servant has been paid for November 2020.”
He added that it is wrong for ASUU to claim it cannot go back to school on an empty stomach while the government had on compassionate grounds paid five months salaries out of the nine months they had been on strike.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment therefore plead the lecturers should go back to work, pledging that the Ministers of Labour, Finance and Education would put up a memo to deal with the outstanding salaries for four months.
#ASUU