Keyamo disclosed this during an interview on Trust TV’s Daily Politics on Monday.
The Minister of state for labour and employment, Festus Keyamo, who is also the spokesperson for the Presidential Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has said that the university lecturers are on strike because of the 2009 agreement signed by the Peoples Democratic Party-led government.
Keyamo disclosed this during an interview on Trust TV’s Daily Politics on Monday.
He added that between 1999 and 2015 when the PDP handed over to the ruling APC, ASUU was on strike 12 times, amounting to 900 days.
“The ASUU thing you are talking about. What is the problem of ASUU now? It’s the 2009 agreement signed by PDP government. They signed agreements with ASUU they couldn’t fulfill. We had to inherit those agreements and now struggling to renegotiate those agreements.
“Imagine how irresponsible a government can be when they went into agreements with ASUU and signed conditions that they couldn’t fulfill and that is why ASUU is on strike; so let us tell Nigerians that ASUU is not on strike because APC signed an agreement with them. It was the PDP that signed the agreement.
“We are not shifting blame; we are going to tackle the problem. Between 1999 and 2015 when they handed over to the APC, ASUU was on strike 12 times. I have the statistics amounting to 900 days.”
But responding, the spokesperson for the (PDP) presidential campaign, Daniel Bwala, who appeared on Trust TV alongside Keyamo, said during the PDP government when ASUU or any of the labour unions was on strike, there were constructive engagements between the parties.
He said, “Ask Adams Oshiomhole who was the Lord Lugard of labour unionism of that time. He was very blunt, strong and constant on that. In all of those periods when they were on strike either by ASUU or any of the labour unions around the time of PDP; there were constructive engagements, which means all parties were honest, realistic. The argument ASUU is making on all occasions when they were on strike this present government shift the goal post.”
SaharaReporters had about two weeks ago reported how Keyamo said the President Muhammadu Buhari government could not be blamed for insecurity in the country, noting that only Heaven had no security breaches.
“It is a security breach, will it happen again? Will government respond appropriately? They will respond. There are security breaches all over the world regrettably but that is not a yardstick to say that government has failed. There are jailbreaks in America; the most secure place in the world; there are the jailbreaks. In the Western world; there are jailbreaks; unfortunately I am not proud of it,” he had said.
Keyamo had stated that Tinubu was proud of the APC administration in the country, and would use the “same APC template” by Buhari.