Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige, has said the country does not have the kind of money being demanded by the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities.
The union had said that over five years, it would require about N1.3bn to rescucitate the university system.
Speaking on a Channels Television programme, Politics Today, Ngige said the union must understand the situation of the country.
“I am hoping that ASUU should do the right thing and contact their members on the renegotiations that we have had in the last two weeks. First, the issue of earned academic allowances, we have agreed, giving a timeline to the NUC to go back to the old template used in working out the 2021 earned academic allowance – 10.8 per cent of personnel cost.
“We want them to go back very quickly and use that same formula and get us what we are supposed to pay in 2022. That is agreed by everybody.”
Speaking over the revitalisation of the universities, Ngige said the amount is not very clear, what has been paid.
On the release of N1.3tn between 2013 and 2018 to revitalise the universities, with N200bn released in 2013 and only N70bn released in the last seven years, the minister, who noted that government is a continuum, stated that the N1.3tn was a commitment the Goodluck Jonathan-led administration.
He reminded Nigerians that oil was selling at between $100 and $120 per barrel then, while the revenue of the federation was rich.
“The government now says ‘we don’t have the money to pay it.’ This was the agreement between 2016 and 2017,” he said, adding that the government still does not have the funds to fulfil its side of the bargain.
Ngige said the government is now calling for renegotiation of the agreement with ASUU, “unless you want us to go and take money from TETFUND and deceive you as it was done in that period, and place it for you on the table.”