Femi Falana (SAN), the lead counsel for the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has stated that the speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, should apologize to members of the academic union.
WITHIN NIGERIA reports that Falana believes Gbajabiamila’s denial of the agreement reached with ASUU is inappropriate.
According to the Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Gbajabiamila’s efforts to resolve issues related to the government-ASUU strike were thwarted by a member of the Federal Executive Council.
Falana’s apology request comes after a blame game between ASUU president Prof Emmanuel Osodeke and the Speaker over what the union called Gbajabiamila’s deception.
WITHIN NIGERIA reported on Wednesday that Osodoke claimed Gbajabiamila duped the varsity union into ending its eight-month-long strike.
According to him, Gbajabiamila took advantage of his soft spot for ASUU and assured the union, in writing, that the government would immediately, in full, offset the arrears of salaries owed to its members after the strike was called off.
A claim that the speaker has come out to refute, claiming that no time was committed to compensating union members for the time they were on strike.
The spokesman for the House of Representatives, Benjamin Okezie Kalu, faulted the ASUU president’s allegation against Gbajabiamila in a statement issued to journalists in Abuja on Wednesday.
Instead, Kalu explained, the House of Representatives assisted in resolving the strike by making commitments to improve university lecturers’ welfare packages and revitalization funds to improve the infrastructure and operations of federal universities.
However, the human rights lawyer, in his reaction, told Punch that;
It is public knowledge that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila intervened in the last strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities. Several meetings were held with the relevant stakeholders by the leadership of the House. While briefing the Nigerian people on the resolution of the crisis on October 10, 2022, the Speaker did categorically state as follows:
We agreed with ASUU and the government on certain things which we took to Mr President. I have visited the president twice. The first time we made our recommendations with the government shifting some and ASUU shifting some. We spoke with Mr President. There was one sticking issue which was the issue of no work no pay. And the President did ask that he would suggest the recommendations and would have one more meeting which we did on Friday after the budget.
That meeting was even better than the first one we had with him, and Mr President had agreed to settle things. I am not going to talk about that now, and that he would disclose whatever it is tomorrow, Tuesday which is tomorrow.
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