Tobi Adebayo
The Federal Government has said that the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) will not resume its suspended strike action.

Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige made this known during an interview on Arise News monitored by THIS NIGERIA.

Recall that JUSUN had commenced a nationwide strike on April 6, 2021, over the failure of the government to implement the Executive Order signed by President Muhammadu Buhari to grant financial autonomy to the legislature and the judiciary across the 36 states of the country.

The strike was however called off the strike on June 9, 2021, following the intervention of the National Judicial Council (NJC) and other stakeholders.

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Shedding light on how a resolution was reached between the state governors and the Judiciary, Ngige said “We did not do anything special. By the mandate of my ministry, industrial dispute resolution is one of our obligations. When the strike lasted three weeks, I invited all parties and had a meeting with them. We were able to fashion out a Memorandum of Understanding and turned it into a Memorandum of Action for the governors to put in place all the structures needed to implement the autonomy.

“About three laws are cardinal in the agreement we had. Each state is to create a State Account Allocation Committee. All the state revenue are to be remitted into the account which will be monitored by the Commissioner for Finance. There will be a budget committee that will give out yearly allocations to the state’s Judiciary, Legislature and Executive. Some states have started implementing these strategies. All parties are now on the same page,” Ngige explained.

Speaking on whether JUSUN will officially call off the strike, Ngige said that a committee had been put in place to monitor compliance by the states.

“Since I became the Minister for Labour and the labour unions embark on strike actions, I have never signed a paper that said a strike had been called off. They use the word suspension instead. I do not think JUSUN will go back to being on strike because we have been in touch with the Governors’ forum and a three-man committee that was set up for negotiations.

“The committee will also ensure compliance by states and also eliminate the element of fear between the judiciary workers and the governors. Nobody will cross the line to misuse the budget meant for each levels of the judiciary,” he said.