University Staff to Join Labour Congress Over Minimum Wage Strike

The Academic Staff of Union of Universities (ASUU) has said it will join a strike for the implementation of the new minimum wage by the Nigeria Labour Congress even as it chided the federal government for allowing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to take over the policy design and economic management of Nigeria.

ASUU president Professor Ukachuku Awuzie, who addressed journalists at the end of the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the union at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, yesterday, said the political leaders in Nigeria have demonstrated lack of willingness to honour agreement entered with labour leaders over time.

The president, who was making the position of the union known said that it was embarrassing that leaders would agree to issues with labour and renege in their agreement 'irresponsibility'.

"It is even more worrisome that the matter of the new national minimum wage is the subject of an Act of the National Assembly if our government cannot implement their own law passed by them in their own parliament, we wonder what else can be beyond them.

"This is even as they engage regularly in increasing their own salaries outside of the framework of the national salaries incomes and wages commission," he added.

The ASUU president said the NEC had resolved that "the ultimatum is just and needs the support of all Nigerians. As an affiliate of NLC, ASUU is in full support of the ultimatum and is mobilizing all its members across the country to support the strike".

Awuzie said that the national minimum wage was just one of the issues that the national strike would address, saying that "other issues are the blatant theft of public funds going on in the National Assembly and in government, the huge unemployment problem, the funding and intolerable poverty, the planned increase of fuel prices, the unreasonable increase in electricity tariff and inflation".

Also on the state of the national economy, the union stated that instead of the government to rethink the national policy framework in line with the reality of the nation, the government was selling the country's public enterprises all in the name of liberalization of the economy to conform with world trade organisations' demands that are not in the best interest of the nation.