The House of Representatives says it will intervene actively in the dispute between the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the federal government.
The Chairman House Committee on labour, Muhammad Wudil, made the remark when he led other members of the house to receive the Nigerian Labour Congress and its affiliate unions who were in the National Assembly to protest the prolonged ASUU strike.
Mr Wudil, stated that since the beginning of the strike action, the house has been consulting relevant stakeholders with a view to ending the crisis.
The lawmaker assured the protesting unions that the National Assembly would invite all the stakeholders to sit down and see how the crises could be resolved.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress NLC, Comrade Ayuba Waba, stated that they were in the National Assembly to register their protest on the lingering ASUU strike and the urgent need to end it.
Comrade Wabba, who expressed the union’s support to ASUU, lamented that Nigerian universities workers are the least paid in Africa.
The NLC Chairman warned that if nothing is done after the protest, their next line of action would be a three-day nationwide protest and a strike action.
The Mega Protest Rally organised by the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC to demand an end to the prolonged strike by university-based unions has taken off from the Unity Fountain, Maitama, Abuja to the National Assembly Complex.
The protest rally is witnessing a large turned out of workers from the 43 affiliate unions of the NLC, causing heavy traffic gridlock between the Maitama- Federal Secretariat axis of the FCT.
NLC President, Ayubba Wabba told the mammoth crowd of workers who gathered earlier at the Unity Fountain that Congress can no longer endure the endless negotiation since the strike commenced in February this year, and called on the Federal Government to be sincere with the unions and address their demands for the campuses to reopen for students.
While also addressing the protesters, ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke stated that the union’s home-grown payment platform, the University Transparency, and Accountability Solutions, UTAS, was developed to accommodate the peculiarities in the university system did not fail the integrity test as alleged by the Federal Government.
RN
