UPDATE: SSANU, NASU THREATENS TO DISRUPT INDUSTRIAL PEACE IN VARSITIES OVER WITHELD SALARIES
Should the government fail to release the members’ delayed salaries, the Joint Action Committee of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions have warned to disturb the industrial peace in universities.
During their 2022 strike, the former president Muhammadu Buhari’s administration confiscated the pay.
The unions questioned the reasoning behind the government’s decision to release the four months’ worth of withheld salaries for members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities but not the withheld salaries of non-academic staff in a joint letter signed on Friday by Peters Adeyemi, General Secretary of NASU, and Muhammad Ibrahim, President of SSANU.
The unions stated that if the government did not deliver the money owed, they would no longer be able to guarantee the government industrial peace at colleges.
Prior to this, on February 13, 2024, the unions sent protest letters to the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, and the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, protesting the non-teaching staff’s exclusion from receiving their outstanding four-month payments.
The letter read, “We are therefore shocked that two weeks after the letters had been sent and received by the appropriate quarters, the Federal Government has remained quiet and refused to take any step towards addressing this very sensitive issue and it seems as if the Federal Government is taking our maturity for granted.
“We would like to confirm through this medium once again to the Federal Government that the pressure on us has intensified and we have done everything possible within our ambit to prevail on our members to maintain industrial peace and tranquility.
“While we appreciate the Federal Government for paying our academic counterpart, we also deem it necessary that our members are also paid. The various feelers we are getting from our members in the universities and inter-university ventres indicate that we can no longer guarantee and be able to sustain industrial peace in the university sector.
“We therefore use this opportunity once again to call on the Federal Government to do the needful within the next seven days, as the Joint Action Committee of NASU and SSANU should not be held responsible should the wheel of administration and corporate governance be grounded to a halt in the university sector, as we have exercised enough patience.
“If nothing is done by the Federal Government to positively address this situation and respond to our previous letters to them, the members of the two unions may be forced to meet soon to take all lawful and stringent decisions on the matter.”