Indefinite Strike Looms As ASUU Walk Out Of Meeting With FG Delegation

It was a mild drum on Monday as the ASUU delegation walked out of the meeting which lasted for hours at the instance of the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, at the Conference Haill of the ministry.

The meeting which was convened to ensure the suspension of the ongoing strike embarked by the university teachers didn’t see the light of the day as it ended in deadlock. 

The ASUU president, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi with an inscrutable countenance declined comments on the reason for staging a walk out from the meeting. 

With the development, both federal and state government owned institutions are to remain closed indefinitely. 

 Meanwhile the Minister of Labor, Dr Chris Ngige, while addressing newsmen, said the meeting was a continuation meeting from last Monday meeting.

According to him, we gave ourselves some assignment with different Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) on what to do.

 “They brought their reports and we took the reports and we were supposed to do some implementation on the reports.

The issue of shortfall in salaries are being worked on, among other major issues, and I will be meeting with the Minister of Finance tomorrow to find out the stage of implementation of that. So there is progress,” Ngige said.

“So we are going to give ourselves some days for it to be done and to see whether we can accomplish them before Christmas,” he said.

While denying the walk out by the union, Dr Ngige reiterated that, “we held the meeting and we even broke into an executive session and we discussed.

He added that there is no dissatisfaction by the union as “we have already agreed on implementation and we have given ourselves some work plan”.

He, however, said that the only difference for the implementation on the agreement reached was only a matter of days before Christmas for the discussions.

“So that for students who are home, will have some hope of resuming in January and those who have missed their exams this time will also have hope for first week in January.

The Minister of Labour and Employment had last week met with the President at the State House, Abuja on how to resolve the impasse for ASUU to call of the strike that has paralyzed academic activities in the universities.