The Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) have demanded the arrears of withheld salaries of their members from the Federal Government.
While SSANU asked for the release of four months’ arrears, ASUU said it is expecting the arrears of its members during their eight-month strike.
ASUU, through its National President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, lamented that all the issues that led to the strike had not been resolved, despite the intervention of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila.
He accused the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, of paying members of the newly registered Nigeria Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA) in Sokoto who were part of the ASUU strike before the union was registered by the government last month.
Osodeke said: “As of now, it is zero. This is the usual thing with the government once we call off a strike. They have left everything. The government will pretend like nothing has happened. That is why we continue to have strikes.
“When we called off the strike, the assumption was that we have resolved all the issues, which is not correct. Of all the issues the speaker said he was going to do, not a single one has been done.
“Our members are teaching, making sacrifices because of the children who are already in school. But the government deliberately ensured that they don’t pay salaries.
“The minister of labour has come with a new dimension. The newly registered union, NAMDA, the government is paying them seven months’ salary. They have paid them in Sokoto. We were all on strike from the beginning; you registered a union towards the end of the strike and pay them because you said they were working. Working where?
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“They have to pay the withheld salary arrears because all we are doing now is trying to meet up with the backlog. We are clearing the backlog where we stopped to ensure that these students don’t miss a day.”
SSANU faulted the government’s decision to withhold the salaries of its members and that of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Education Institutions.
Its President, Mohammed Ibrahim, in a communiqué at the end of its special National Executive Council meeting, said the government’s “no work no pay” policy had brought about unnecessary and untold hardship to hapless citizens.
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of NASU and SSANU embarked on strike on March 27, 2022.
The unions suspended the strike on August 2022 for two months after reaching an agreement with the government.
Part of the communique reads: “The action of the government to therefore, withhold the salaries of members of the union is unnecessary and has brought about untold hardship to hapless Nigerian citizens.
“NEC, therefore, requests the government to rescind this decision of ‘No work, No pay’ and release the withheld salaries of members of the Joint Action Committee of SSANU and NASU.”
SSANU urged the Federal Government to expedite the process of upholding its part of the terms of the agreement on which the strike action was suspended.
On the status of some state universities, SSANU rejected “the current trend in most states in Nigeria, where state governments that are unable to meet the financial, structural and capacity building needs of state-owned universities, neglect already established universities and approve the establishment of new ones.”