News
My 3 children are in Nigerian universities – Ngige
BY NICHOLAS ABE
Nigeria’s Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, has discountenanced insinuation that public office holders have treated negotiation with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) with levity because their children study in foreign universities.
He described the comment as untrue as his own children are in public universities in Nigeria and also affected by the ASUU strike.
The minister restated the commitment of Federal Government to end the eight-month strike embarked upon by university lecturers to protest payment structure among other issues.
“I have three biological children in public schools. They are in public schools; they are not in private universities. Unlike ASUU members who have most of their children in private universities, three of mine are here. So, I am a very big stakeholder in the public tertiary school system,” Ngige said in a response to a question on Arise TV interview on Monday, according to The Punch.
READ: Rethink your attitude to governance, Otti counsels office holders
The minister added: “So, when ASUU says politicians don’t care because they have taken their children abroad, Chris Ngige cares because my children are not abroad even though they have dual nationality – two of them have American citizenship; they can be in America but I choose them to be here with me.
“So, ASUU cannot accuse me of not being nationalistic enough. Anything that will help the university system here, I am in the forefront.”
RELIABLESOURCENG.COM had reported Friday that the Federal Government had accepted the demand by ASUU that their members be exempted from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
The government also offered to increase the Earned Allowances to university staff from N30 billion to N35b and the Revitalisation Fund from N20b to N25b.
The development came after weeks of negotiations and disagreements by the FG and ASUU, which proposed the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as its preferred payment platform.