President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, to hands off negotiations with the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

Mr Buhari, who gave the directive during a briefing by the heads of the various concerned ministries, departments and agencies of government on Tuesday in Abuja, also okayed the suggestion by the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, to take over the negotiations.

Mr Adamu was said to have complained to the gathering the reason behind his prolonged silence on the matter, saying his labour and employment counterpart had since 2016 argued “that only the labour ministry has the mandate to negotiate with striking workers unions in Nigeria.”

ASUU has also blamed Mr Ngige for allegedly complicating the crisis and making resolution difficult.

ASUU stated the position on Tuesday at a media briefing on the status of the negotiations. The union said the position became necessary as part of its efforts to clarify conflicting positions allegely linked to the union.

A highly-placed source, who was at the meeting and spoke with PREMIUM TIMES in confidence, said earlier reports that President Buhari ordered the education minister to address the ASUU crisis within two weeks is inaccurate.

The source said; “The President never directed the education minister to end the strike in two or three weeks. It was the minister himself who hinted of a possibility of an end to the crisis between two and three weeks.

At Tuesday’s briefing, the concerned ministries, agencies and departments of government gave the status of the negotiations to the President.

Those at the meeting with the president were the ministers of education, finance, labour, and communications and digital economy, Adamu Adamu, Zainab Ahmed, Mr Ngige and Isa Pantami respectively.

Others were the Head of Service of the Federation, Folashade Yemi-Esan; Chairman of the National Salaries Income and Wages Commission, Ekpo Nta, and the Director-General of Budget Office, Ben Akabueze.

A source at the meeting told our correspondent that the President directed that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, and Mr Ngige should only serve as observer and conciliators at the resolution meetings.

Read more at
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/543782-buhari-orders-ngige-to-step-down-from-ongoing-negotiation-with-ASUU.html

Very good ordering. Very useless man.
Both the orderer and orderee are totally useless.
Agents of backwardness

Seriously, all the university students need to go back to SS2 for tutorials after the strike is called off.... that's if it will ever be called off.

Meanwhile, go get your own books now

,

Failures

Ngige is a lousy mo'fo...he dragged it this far

Ngige is the stumbling block

Coward man

As far as am concerned, it not yet clear that the strike is ending anytime soon.
So sad

Airlines don shake their table

I don dey expect this since. They've had rolls, they've had heated arguments, Ngige will not want to persuade these striking lecturers and if he does, they wouldn't listen.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUQXrQXDqaA

Welcome development

I'm vindicated now, I've said it before that the man is the problem of Nigeria labour union and he is nothing but a charlatan , I now understand why he was kidnapped as governor then when he tried to double play his God father.

duduade:
Ngige is the stumbling block

Coward man

The name NGIGE sounds like obstacles. Hmmmm.

Yeye president that don't know when to act. Malam

Quietly observing with my Tombo bitters drink