Chidi Samuel ||Contrary to the promise by the minister of Education, Adamu Adamu that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will call off the industrial action it embarked on Monday within one week when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Thursday, a meeting between the Nigerian government and university lecturers ended in a deadlock once again.
An earlier meeting with the government was also unsuccessful. Thursday’s meeting began at exactly 3:42 p.m. in Abuja.
The Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, in his opening, remark noted that ASUU did not follow the proper procedure before embarking on the strike.
Ngige said, “There must be a mandatory letter of 15 days to labour, to education before going on strike,” to the ministries of labour and education.
“All agreements are supposed to be domiciled in ministry of labour in order to track implementation as agreement gives room to renegotiation.”
The president of ASUU, Biodun Ogunyemi, said Mr. Ngige had taken side with his education colleague, Adamu Adamu, insisting that ASUU informed relevant ministries before embarking on strike.
“There was a letter dated July 10 to inform the major stakeholders. In the last 10 months, we’ve written 10 letters trying to reach out to relevant stakeholders after suspending the seven days warning strike in November last year,” he said.
“This is not a fresh action and we are open to suggestions.”
The meeting later went into a technical session.
In the end, the ASUU chairman said the strike continued and that the union would revert to the government next week.