BY Bolanle Olabimtan
Representatives of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) have walked out of a scheduled meeting with Chris Ngige, minister of labour.
Ngige had rescheduled a meeting with the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and JUSUN over the ongoing nationwide strike that has crippled court activities for two weeks.
The union had, on April 6, embarked on a nationwide strike to protest against the non-implementation of financial autonomy of the judiciary.
The meeting with the labour minister, which was initially fixed for April 15, was postponed.
The abrupt postponement of the meeting infuriated the NBA and JUSUN, who then called for nationwide protests over the issue.
The protests held in Abuja and different parts of the country on Monday.
At the rescheduled meeting on Tuesday leaders of the union were said to have arrived at the conference hall of the federal ministry of labour and employment for the meeting slated for 3pm
However, as of 4:35pm, the minister was yet to arrive for the meeting.
Efforts by some officials of the ministry to pacify the visibly angry judiciary workers failed, as they walked out of the hall.
In a video, some of the leaders were heard saying “the minister doesn’t know how to talk to people.”
Speaking with TheCable, Jimoh Alonge, JUSUN treasurer, expressed reservations over the way members of the union were treated.
“We were supposed to meet by 3pm and we were there before 3pm. We waited for the minister. They were inside, but we don’t know what they were doing inside,” Alonge said.
“They just kept us there, no courtesy to tell us what was going on. All our guests, including lawyers, were there but no news from them for almost two hours.
“They kept us for over an hour and thirty minutes or more and most of my members ran out of patience so we had to walk out.”
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