The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige on Tuesday said loose ends remain in the agreement reached with judiciary workers.
The striking workers met with key stakeholders on Monday at the State House in Abuja where it was resolved that their call for financial autonomy for state legislative and judiciary will be implemented by May 2021.
However, earlier on Tuesday, the judiciary workers staged a walkout from a follow-up reconciliation meeting with the Federal Government and representatives of the State Governors, after waiting for over an hour at the conference room of the Ministry of Labour and Employment.
Reacting to the walkout, Dr. Ngige said his work on some “loose ends” in Monday’s agreement caused his lateness to the meeting.
“Once necessary agreements have been reached as memorandum of understanding, we bring everybody here and detail them with timelines and timeframe,” he said.
“So they came for this meeting. But there were some loose ends they did not tie up. So I asked the Permanent Secretary and the officials responsible to explain to them that they have to exercise patience to enable us tidy these areas before meeting with them.
“So, nobody slighted them, nobody refused to meet with them. We wanted to meet with them so that the meeting would be fruitful, so that whatever is signed here will be implementable.
“We are making contact with them by tomorrow. And this work has not even finished. The government side has to go back and tie up the loose ends that I have pointed out to them here.”
