The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to sue the Federal Government for registering rival Congress of Nigerian Universities Academics (CONUA) and the National Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA).
This was made known by Femi Falana, ASUU’s lawyer on Thursday when he appeared on Channels Television.
The WITNESS recalls that Chris Ngige, minister of labour and employment had on Tuesday presented certificates of registration to CONUA and NAMDA in Abuja to decentralize ASUU’s might.
Ngige, who spoke while presenting the certificate of registration to the two unions, explained that the two bodies will exist along aside ASUU.
However, Femi Falana, lead counsel to ASUU noted that the union would sue the Federal Government over the registration of the two unions.
“ASUU is going to court. It is going to be the NIC,” Falana said.
He added that “You can’t have two trade unions in the same sector. Only a union is allowed to be registered for all academics in Nigeria.
“That is the essence of the classification of trade unions because we used to have mushrooms in the First Republic so the government restructured the unions and grouped all academics together and all non-academics together. You can’t have two or three in one field,” he said.
Falana said there is a Supreme Court judgment on the proliferation of trade unions – the Erasmus Osawe V Registrar of Trade Unions.
The senior lawyer also said the apex court ruled “that your freedom of association is not totalled; it is also regulated by the Trade Unions Act so that there will be no proliferation of trade unions”.