ABUJA–THE Federal Government has again appealed to members of the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to immediately call off their prolonged industrial action and return to their students for resumption of academic work in the public universities.
Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige made this appeal Thursday while interacting with journalists in his office after receiving a notification letter of his nomination by Sun Newspaper Publishing Limited for the award of ‘Public Service Icon 2021’.
Ngige said the Federal Government remained unrelenting in its efforts towards addressing all the industrial disputes in the university system, involving ASUU and the other unions.
According to him, everything contained in the December 2020 agreement was religiously executed to the extent that the Federal Government aggregately paid N92b from the 2021 budget to cover the revitalisation funds and Earned Academic Allowances/Earned Allowances for non teaching staff.
The minister faulted the demand by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) for a high-powered panel with requisite mandate to resolve all the disputes within 21 days, saying the President had already put in place his own high-powered team, comprising his Chief of Staff, the Ministers of Labour, Education, Finance, Communication and Digital Economy.