The Federal Government has warned the union to stop acting in defiance of the interlocutory injunction issued by the National Industrial Court (NICN), which restrained the union from further action, as the industrial strike launched by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, enters its eighty-month mark.
In a statement published over the weekend and signed by Olajide Oshundun, the ministry’s deputy director of press and public relations, Senator Chris Ngige, minister of labor and employment, issued the warning.
Recall that the president of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, stated that the union’s members were not obligated by the Industrial Court’s order to return to work because they had appealed the decision and were awaiting a hearing on the court’s request for a stay of execution.
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Ngige said that ASUU shouldn’t be instructing its members to continue the 8-month strike in order to circumvent the law.
He claimed that a recent union directive urging its members to continue the strike was illegal and that the government disapproved of it.
He also cautioned the union against the possibility of court order contempt penalties.
Part of the statement read: “The union is dishonest and misleading its members and the general public that it has filed an appeal as well as a stay of execution of the order of National Industrial Court on September 21, 2022, though it has none of this. “Rather, ASUU only filed an application for a permission to appeal the order. It also attached to the application, a proposed notice of appeal which it intends to file if the leave to appeal is granted. The application for a stay of execution as of this moment has not even been listed for hearing. Where then is ASUU coming from?
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“It is, therefore, contemptuous, dishonest and misleading for the union to tell its members that it has not only appealed the interlocutory injunction by the National Industrial Court, directing it to call off strike and return to work, but that it also has a stay of execution”, it said.
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