TheCable

Emmanuel Osodeke, president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), says Chris Ngige, minister of labour, has been misinforming President Muhammadu Buhari on the union’s strike.

On July 11, Buhari appealed to the union to reconsider its ongoing strike because the action is taking a toll on parents and students.

Speaking on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme on Thursday, Osodeke said if the president had been properly briefed he would not have made such a statement.

Concerning the negotiation, the ASUU president said the union is not aware of the figure being circulated by federal  government as the amount needed to resolve the strike.

“If the president had been properly briefed by the committee through the minister of education, I don’t think the president would have said enough is enough, go to your class while we are negotiating,” he said.

“It is the labour minister and his group that would have gone to the president to tell him that if we chase out his people, we refuse salary.

“We are not aware of where their so-called figure arrives from. In all our agreement and discussion, we didn’t talk about 1.2 trillion or 2.4 trillion, or whatever. We didn’t.

“We didn’t calculate the quantum of what we would need. We calculated what each member of our union will earn.

“If this man who is telling you this figure can tell a lie that ASUU chased out his members from the negotiation table, why would he not tell a lie about the figure. 

“The ministry is churning out fake figures. We negotiated with the ministry of education, so wherever they got the documents is their business.”