The National Industrial Court (NIC) has affirmed the status of the Congress Of University Academics (CONUA) and the Nigeria Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA) as trade unions in Nigeria, thus dismissing the suit filed by ASUU.

In a ruling on Tuesday, the president of the NIC, Justice Benedict Kanyip, dismissed ASUU’s lawsuit which challenged the Federal Government’s registration of CONUA and NAMDA as trade unions.

Kanyip ruled that Section 27 of the Trade Union Act does not depict trade monopoly and makes allowance for more than one trade union in employment.

He added that both the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, and the registrar of the union, were within their rights to register both unions to co-exist with ASUU.

The Justice held that ASUU did not provide any evidence to show the complete registration of CONUA and NAMDA when the suit was filed, adding that any evidence that was provided by ASUU was hearsay because the suit was filed on October 26, 2022, meanwhile, CONUA and NAMDA’s registration had yet to be, gazetted in line with Section 523 of the Trade Union Act.

THE WHISTLER reported last year, when ASUU’s legal representative, Femi Falana SAN, stated that the union would sue the FG for registering CONUA and NAMDA while it was still on strike.

Falana said the registration of the unions is illegal seeing as only one union is allowed to operate in every sector, according to the Trade Union Act.

“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 added that there is a Supreme Court judgment on the proliferation of trade unions, the Erasmus Osawe V Registrar of Trade Unions.