Chris Ngige, minister of labour and employment, says the federal government may consider taking the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to the industrial court if the process to resolve the strike fails.
On February 14, ASUU embarked on a one-month warning strike over the non-implementation of an agreement reached with the federal government in 2020.
On March 14, the union extended the strike by eight weeks following dissatisfaction with the federal government’s “disappointing” response on the matter.
Amid the strike, the federal government and the leadership of ASUU have held a series of meetings, but no agreement has been reached by both sides on ending the strike.
Speaking on Thursday in an interview with Channels Television, Ngige said ASUU must refrain from “intimidating” officials in the ministry of digital communications and economy and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) over the deployment of the University Transparency Account System (UTAS) proposed by the union.
The labour minister added that the federal government does not have the resources to review the salaries of varsity lecturers by 180 percent as contained in a previous proposal submitted when Munzali Jibril, a professor, was leading the renegotiation committee.
“The solution is that number one, ASUU has to come down from its high horse. You cannot go and start intimidating people in NITDA and threatening the minister of digital economy and communications with revocation of his professorship; that he is a fake professor and that they did not approve it,” he said.
