Following the ongoing four weeks warning strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU, the Minister of Labour, Employment and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige, has reportedly insisted that the Federal Government does not have the funds to meet its obligations in the agreement signed with the Union.
Ngige reportedly stated this on Thursday, noting, “I am hoping that ASUU should do the right thing and contact their members on the renegotiations that we have had in the last two weeks. First, the issue of earned academic allowances, we have agreed, giving a timeline to the NUC to go back to the old template used in working out 2021 earned academic allowance – 10.8 per cent of personnel cost.”
He added, “We want them to go back very quickly and use that same formula and get us what we are supposed to pay in 2022. That is agreed by everybody.”
Commenting on the release of N1.3tn between 2013 and 2018 to revitalise the universities, with N200bn released in 2013 and only N70bn released in the last seven years, the minister, who posited that government is a continuum, stated that the N1.3tn was promised by the Goodluck Jonathan-led administration, and that oil was selling at between $100 and $120 per barrel then, while the revenue of the federation was rich.
The minister however made it known, “The government now says ‘we don’t have the money to pay it.’ This was the agreement between 2016 and 2017. Unless you want us to go and take money from TETFUND and deceive you as it was done in that period, and place it for you on the table.”
https://punchng.com/fg-has-no-funds-to-meet-asuus-demands-ngige/?amp
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