ICYMI: ASUU issues warning to FG over payment of half salaries

• ASUU has issued a warning to FG over the payment of half of the salaries
• The union threatens a nationwide strike if demands are not met

Yesterday, members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) issued a warning to the federal government, FG about a new crisis that would eclipse all others in the university system.

However, the union insisted that its members could not and would not continue to perform unpaid jobs for free.

Professor Rasheed Adeoye, a former university chairman of ASUU and a union council member, and Dr. Olatunji Abdulganiyu, the union’s secretary at the university, were speaking with journalists in Ilorin, Kwara State, shortly after the union members in the University of Ilorin branch began a protest.

They reportedly claimed that the government had paid half of the union members’ salaries for October and that this was unacceptable and would be resisted.

The union leaders said: “As a law-abiding union, we have heeded the directive of the court which directed that we resume duty while the substantive matter is being heard.

“However, after the resumption of the strike, to our utmost dismay, the government decided that half of the salaries be paid to our members for the month of October 2022. This development is unacceptable and would be resisted by our union.

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“The fact is that academics are not casual workers. Only casual workers receive pay pro-rate. The law of the land is also clear on this. Indeed, the National Industrial Court made it clear in a landmark judgment in 2020 that tenured staff cannot be paid pro rata.

“It is very sad that the Minister of Labour is ignorant of the fact that academic staff engages in so many activities aside from teaching duties. In fact, the primary duty of academic staff is research, and there are other activities that have continued to engage their attention irrespective of a strike or whether the school is in session or not.”

They added: “Gentlemen of the press, let me assure you that our union is resolved to continue to call the attention of the government to its responsibilities despite the obnoxious treatment being meted out to us by the government.

“To this effect, though we have resumed work in our university, the government’s ignoble stance of withholding our eight months’ salaries, which is based on its ill-advised policy of ‘No work, No Pay’ is set to trigger fresh crises. In the coming days, the union would respond by considering invoking the ‘No Pay, No Work’ policy, and would abandon the works that have accumulated for those periods during which the government has falsely claimed that our members have not worked.

“Members of the public are hereby sensitized and put on notice again that fresh crisis, which would surpass all previous ones, is looming again in the Nigeria universities as our members cannot and would not continue to do free work that would not be remunerated.

“We hope that with this notice, all relevant stakeholders, who have the ears of the government and would act fast before the fragile peace restored on our campuses nationwide collapse.”