In response to its unfulfilled demands, the Academic Staff Union of Universities announced that it will meet with the Federal Government on July 25, 2024. This came as non-academic university employees stated on Sunday that they had planned to stage a one-day campus protest on Tuesday in response to their four-month salaries being withheld. The one-day demonstration would serve as a warm-up for a national demonstration scheduled on July 18.
In a phone contact with correspondent from PUNCH on Sunday, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, the National President of ASUU, revealed this. According to Osodeke, the deadline for implementing the plan agreed upon with the federal government is July 25.
ASUU chapters around the nation have been holding protests for a few weeks now. Students had also joined the protesting professors, who promised to start another round of strike action if the government broke its promises to them.
Additionally, the union demanded in an open letter to President Bola Tinubu that the 2009 Memorandum of Understanding be fully implemented with the Federal Government.
Osodeke stated that the protests had a beneficial outcome, saying that it caused the Federal Government to convene a meeting with the union and set a deadline for fulfilling certain commitment.
“We have met with the Minister of Education and reached a timeline. They made promises to us and we want to watch if it would be done. We are meeting two weeks from today, July 25th, to see if they have done what they promised.
“The protest made them to call us for a meeting, they should fulfill their promise,” he stated.
As stated in a letter that was printed in a newspaper on June 20, 2024, Nigerian academics were forced to start a nationwide walkout on February 14, 2022, when their pleas for the government to address the issues at hand were met with silence.
The resolution of the FGN/ASUU Agreement renegotiation based on the Nimi Briggs Committee’s draft Agreement of 2021, according to Osodeke, was one of the ten concerns and other emergent ones.
According to him, the agreement covered the following: the release of three and a half months’ salaries that had been withheld due to the 2022 strike action; the release of unpaid salaries for staff members on sabbatical leave, part-time jobs, and adjunct appointments as a result of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System; the release of unpaid third-party deductions, including cooperative contributions and check-off dues; and funding for the revitalization of public universities (which was partially covered by the 2023 Federal Government Budget).
A number of other contentious issues are the Earned Academic Allowances (which are partially covered in the Federal Government’s Budget for 2023), the federal and state governments’ proliferation of universities, the implementation of visitation panel reports, the illegal dissolution of Governing Councils, and the University Transparency and Accountability Solutions (which replace IPPIS).
“Your Excellency is requested to set necessary machinery in motion for bringing ASUU and major stakeholders (Ministries, Departments, and Agencies) together to address the outstanding issues in FGN/ASUU engagements since 2009. This will save our university system the agonies of another round of industrial action and its disruptive potential. The President’s promise of smooth academic calendars in universities at the inception of this administration, we believe, is achievable if the government sincerely sits down to address the issues as listed here,” Osodeke said.
Meanwhile, unions representing the university’s non-academic staff members announced on Sunday that they would be going on a nationwide strike beginning on Thursday, July 18, 2024, in protest of their four-month salary being withheld. But first, on Tuesday, all of the non-academic union branches operating under the Joint Action Committee’s aegis would stage protests in each of their branches.
The workers claimed that their meeting with the government authorities had broken down. They were representing the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions. This was revealed in a circular that was received on Sunday and co-signed by Mohammed Ibrahim, the president of SSANU, and Peters Adeyemi, the general secretary of NASU, both of which operate under the joint action committee’s aegis.
The circular urged all two union branches to call an obligatory general meeting for today, July 8, 2024, to educate members on the government’s indifference to their plights.
Unions claim that after multiple meetings with the Minister of Education and its Labour counterpart, the Federal Government has refused to pay their members’ four-month salary, which prompted them to take action.
“The national body of the Joint Action Committee of NASU and SSANU met on Thursday, 4th July 2024 to appraise and take position on the current situation in respect of the withheld four months’ salaries and other grievances of our members in the University and Inter-University Centres.
“Similarly, the National JAC, on invitation, met with the Honourable Minister of Education; Honourable Minister of State for Education; Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education; other top officials of the Ministry and National Universities Commission.
“Unfortunately, after the engagement, the Minister of Education has not shown any convincing commitment to the payment of our withheld salaries and resolutions of other pending grievances of JAC of the two unions.
“It is also disheartening that the JAC was also at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, and as usual, the Minister of State was not on seat to receive us, as we were informed that she had an urgent call from the Villa.
“The Permanent Secretary, who stood in for her, could not make any commitment on the issues raised. In view of this disappointment and failure of the government to address the grievances of NASU and SSANU, JAC has decided on a series of industrial actions which, include the following:
“All branches of NASU and SSANU should mandatorily hold a general meeting on Monday, 8th Jul, 2024 to sensitise members to the insensitivity of the government to our plights.
“A one-day protest should hold on Tuesday, 9th July 2024 at each branch simultaneously. Every branch should ensure that all members fully participate in the protest and the press or media is adequately mobilised.
“A national protest, which will hold in Abuja on Thursday, 18th July, 2024 after which JAC will meet to announce a date when the strike action will commence. Further information will be communicated appropriately,” the circular read.
Academic and non-academic workers at Nigerian universities were denied pay by the Nigerian government in 2022 for participating in an industrial action that shut down the institutions for eight months.
President Bola Tinubu ordered in October that the academic staff’s eight months’ worth of salaries that had been withheld be paid, but not the non-teaching staff. The government and the non-academic staff union experienced a fresh rift as a result of this development.
Both SSANU and NASU have protested the “selective payments” since the announcement and have requested to be included. But in February, only the academic staff received their four months’ salary.
