The former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Attahiru Jega, has said that the Minister of labour and employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, has turned the strike action of the Academic Staff Union of Universities into a personal dispute between himself(Ngige), the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu and ASUU.
Jega made this claim late Tuesday night during an interview on Arise TV.
“Unfortunately, right now, the minister of labour is not helping matters. He has turned this into a personal quarrel between him and the minister of education on one hand and between himself and the Academic Staff Union of Universities on the other.” He said.
“While many other people are trying to find a way of addressing this situation so that students can go back to school and ASUU can go back to work, he is busy creating challenges. He took the matter to the industrial court, now today (Tuesday), he now registered two unions and he is trying to proscribe Academic Staff Union of Universities.
“If this is allowed by this government, I think this is a recipe for disaster and it may really create more problems than it can solve on this matter of strikes in the universities.”
However not everyone appears to have aligned with Jega’s position. Commenting on the matter Chinelo Bob-Osamor picked holes in the former INEC chairman’s assertion. She wonders why he had cause to extortionate the President who she thinks could have put an end to the lingering issue but chose to pay the ostrich. ” Conveniently Jega will not blame Buhari he foisted on all of us.”
Also commenting on the issue on their Facebook page Chukwuma Oldman had this to say “Ngige is looking for something else, not the ASUU strike anymore, may be there are some of the professors he want to show some level of wickedness because of personal issue” howeverhe failed to prove if the Minister was targeting the professors in anyway.
Okeke Samuel also commenting says he believes that creating splinter unions will further compound issues are they are already.
