2023: Nwajiuba A Comedian, Ngige Biased Conciliator — ASUU Slams Education, Labour Ministers Over Presidential Bids

The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Emmanuel Osodeke, has slammed the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, and the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, over their 2023 presidential bids.

Speaking in an interview with THE WHISTLER, Osodeke described Nwajiuba as a pretender and comedian whose presidential bid could best be described as a joke taken too far.

The ASUU president also berated Ngige over recent remarks he made about the ongoing strike by the university lecturers, describing him as biased.

Amidst the ongoing strike, both Ngige and Nwajiuba declared their intentions to contest the presidency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with Nwajiuba going as far as paying N100 million for the ruling party’s nomination and expression of interest forms.

For Osodeke, Ngige and Nwajiuba shouldn’t consider themselves capable of leading the nation when both ministers have failed to resolve the lingering ASUU strike to enable thousands of Nigerian undergraduates resume studies.

On Nwajiuba’s presidential ambition, Osodeke said: “You know there are people you call comedians, they pretend a lot and they can do anything. I think that is exactly what he (Nwajiuba) is doing. You can’t run a Ministry as the deputy when the Minister is not around, and you want to run the country. We have jokers in this country and that is exactly what I think,” he said.

He added that it is because Nwajiuba has amassed a lot of wealth while in office that he could afford to pay the N100 million required to purchase the APC nomination and expression of interest forms.

“I thought it was just a joke until he paid, and that is what we are saying. They have too much money, they have accumulated so much money from the system, he doesn’t mind if he loses 100 million, that is it. It’s just a joke,” he said.

The ASUU President also reacted to Ngige’s recent interview where he described himself as a conciliator who had done what many other public officers could not do to forestall the ongoing industrial action by ASUU.

Osodeke said the minister cannot be considered a conciliator because he is loyal to the government and a conciliator is meant to be independent of both parties in any issue.

“By all standards, that Minister is not a conciliator. A conciliator should be someone who is independent on both sides, but he is a government minister that is even contesting for the presidency.

“You can’t be on one side and say you want to solve an issue for both sides. He is working for his employer, he is not a conciliator. If you call him a conciliator, then he’s a biased conciliator.

“A conciliator should be an independent body that will look at both sides honestly, not because you are already biased on one side. You are contesting for President of a country under the party that is ruling and you said you are a conciliator. “, he said.

He added that this is why the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had advised the government to employ a team of unbiased people to resolve the dispute, indicating that ASUU may be dissatisfied with the Professor Nimi Briggs-led renegotiation committee reconstituted by the Federal Government.

“The NLC has told the government, put on a team of honest people with integrity, people we can trust, and ask them to resolve the issue, they will resolve it in two days, not those who are already biased. So any day we have a committee of people who are unbiased, honest and look at the situation the way it is, then we will move forward,” he said.

In a recent interview, Ngige had said that the Federal Government might consider resolving the issue in court, specifically the National Industrial Court or the Industrial Arbitration Panel if reconciliation fails.

Osodeke, however, said that ASUU was awaiting whatever the Federal Government wants to do, adding that the move would not succeed because the government had taken that route once when Nigerian doctors were on strike and it didn’t work out for them.

“Whatever they want to do, we are waiting. They did it with the doctors, did they succeed? They don’t learn from the past, that is the issue we have with them. Instead of resolving the issue, you are talking about the court. When they took the doctors to court concerning their salaries, did that solve the problem? Didn’t they come back to say let’s negotiate the issue?

“They just talk without looking at the implications on the country. Let’s assume they are able to force the lecturers to go back to school, what will happen to the universities? Will the lecturers teach well? Will they put in their best the way they were doing before? They don’t look at the system, they look at personal issues which are very wrong for this country,” he said.

The ASUU President further said that there is no country in the world where disputes with trade unions are taken to court, but that Nigerian executives are not bothered because it is a government issue.

“There is no other country in the world where people will talk about court because of a trade dispute, they resolve it. By negotiation, not by force. If you do it by force you will destroy that industry.

“No businessman, no company will want to go to court with its workers to call off a strike, because when they come back they will destroy that industry. But because it’s a government issue, they are not bothered, their children are not here studying. So no company worth its salt will say ‘I want to take my workers to court to call off a strike’”, he said.

Speaking on the deliberations by the renegotiation committee, contrary to what the labour minister had said in a previous interview, the Union had met with the renegotiation committee once but nothing meaningful came out of it.

“They invited us once, but they didn’t come up with anything. They said they went around ministries and parastatals to get their views which doesn’t make any sense. The negotiation is between ASUU and the FG, not ASUU and the Ministries so they have no need going to the Ministries. They were supposed to come to us to either sign that agreement or to renegotiate, which they have not done,” he said.

He added that the minister had not called a meeting even though the 6-week deadline for deliberations had passed.

“The 6 weeks ended more than two weeks ago. The deadline was given to the committee on the 1st of March, today is the 29th of April, which is more than 8 weeks. So they are not doing anything, they are just pretending,” he said.

On Ngige’s earlier claim that the varsity lecturers were the ones prolonging the negotiation process, and that only ASUU could put an end to the strike, Osodeke replied that it was untrue.

“We have presented our case and we expect them to present their own and then both sides will agree on something. This (Strike) is something that has been going on for more than 10 weeks, we should have been discussing it long ago, and they are saying that we are the ones hindering discussions, but they’ve not called us.

“So they are the ones creating the problem, thinking that they can use other means to get us to call off the strike which is not correct,” he concluded.

Ngige had also claimed that, “Last year alone, based on the timelines I put on the 2020 agreement, they got N92.7 billion in terms of Revitalisation and Earned Academic/ Earned Allowances for the university system,” adding that the strike ending is wholly dependent on ASUU as the “the ball is in their court”.

Meanwhile, during the acceptance of his presidential forms on Wednesday, the state education minister, Nwajiuba also claimed that the government has done everything the union wants, adding that although it is the government’s duty to give life to the 2009 agreement signed with the union and ensure that the universities are properly funded, the government’s funding is very limited.

ASUU has been on strike since February 14th, 2022, to intensify its demands which include the renegotiation of its 2009 agreement with the government and deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) to replace the Federal Government’s Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).

ASUU President, Emmanuel Osodeke, had told THE WHISTLER in an earlier interview that the strike might be extended by 4 months if the government fails to meet the union’s demands before the proposed end of the current one.

Some of the demands of the university lecturers include payment of earned academic allowances, funds for the revitalization of public universities, promotion arrears, and poor funding of state universities.

ASUU has also insisted on the release of the reports of the government’s visitation panels to federal universities and regular payment of salary to lecturers.