Osodeke also stated that the figures the government is peddling as what ASUU is demanding are not true, stating that they didn’t give such figures during their negotiations.
The president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Professor Emmanuel Osodeke has given update on the ongoing strike action.
Osodeke accused the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige of lying to President Muhammadu Buhari about the status of negotiations with the union.
He spoke on Thursday about the lingering ASUU strike during an appearance on Channels Television interview programme.
Osodeke said Ngige must have been feeding the President fake information.
According to the ASUU president, if President Buhari had been getting the truth about the negotiations between the union and the government, he wouldn’t have issued the ‘enough is enough’ statement in which he charge the striking University lecturers to return to work.
Osodeke also stated that the figures the government is peddling as what ASUU is demanding are not true, stating that they didn’t give such figures during their negotiations.
“If the president had been properly briefed by the committee through the minister of education, I don’t think the president would have said enough is enough, go to your class while we are negotiating,” he said.
“It is the labour minister and his group that would have gone to the president to tell him that if we chased out his people, we refuse salary.
“We are not aware of where their so-called figure arrives from. In all our agreement and discussion, we didn’t talk about 1.2 trillion or 2.4 trillion, or whatever. We didn’t.
“We didn’t calculate the quantum of what we would need. We calculated what each member of our union will earn.
“If this man who is telling you this figure can tell a lie that ASUU chased out his members from the negotiation table, why would he not tell a lie about the figure.
“The ministry is churning out fake figures. We negotiated with the ministry of education, so wherever they got the documents is their business,” he submitted.