The Bayelsa State Government, yesterday, urged members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) of the state-owned Niger Delta University (NDU), to consider its position and return to the negotiation table.
Lecturers of the state-owned university has embarked on strike since April to protest the inability of the government to pay backlog of salaries.
The government, which spoke through Governor Seriake Dickson’s Special Adviser on Political Matters 1, Chief Fyneman Wilson, said it would be beneficial to the government and the students if the government returned to dialogue.
Wilson said Dickson was concerned about the current economic situation in the country and the state and its effects on the people.
He noted that the governor was genuinely and strategically doing everything within his power to cushion the effect by way of installment payments of the backlog of salaries based on the inflow of funds from the federal allocation.
He said: “Recently, the state government and ASUU in a meeting agreed on a number of issues, prominent among the resolutions reached was that the government will pay the January 2016 salaries and half salaries for the months of March and April.
“It is already a public knowledge that government has paid January 2016 salaries and is waiting for ASUU to get back to government on discussions with its members on whether they will accept the half salaries as proposed by the government. The government also appealed to ASUU to reopen the university while talks are ongoing.”
But Wilson said while the government fulfilled its part of the agreement, by paying January salaries, with a commitment to pay two months’ half salaries, ASUU allegedly refused to reopen the institution and was demanding full payments of four months.
He sympathised with the students on the four months’ closure of the school saying that governments all over the world accept dialogue and peaceful resolution of issues and that Bayelsa is no exception.
He said the students used last Wednesday’s protest to express their displeasure over the shutting down of NDU, but allowed themselves to be infiltrated by the opposition party.
He urged the students to be patient with government and to explore non-violent means of persuading ASUU to call off the strike and return to the negotiation table with government.
On the criticism surrounding the recent passage of a bill by the Bayelsa State House of Assembly for the establishment of the African International University (AIU), a public-private initiative, Wilson said the institution was part of the government’s commercialisation strategy.