The threat came just as their teaching
counterpart, ASUU also rejected all appeals
made to it to call off its strike and allow for
negotiation to continue. Rather, ASUU delared
that the strike would go on as planned.
NASU President, Comrade Ladi Iliya, who read
a joint press statement by the unions, listed
the main issues in contention as the funding
of university education, the Earned Allowance
and the NEEDS assessment report, which was
targetted at mass sack of the non-teaching
staff working in the universities.
According to Iliya, since 2009, several
representations had been made to the
government and the implementation
committee set up by the government itself
without results.
“It appears as if government is taking our
understanding for granted thereby putting us
under unbearable pressure from our
members whose patience is fast running out.
“It is in light of this that JAC is calling on
Nigerians to prevail on government to
address all burning issues within the shortest
possible time, failure of which we may not be
able to continue to hold our members back
from resuming our earlier suspended strike
action without notice,” Iliya said.
According to her, the Federal Government
has consistently failed to honour agreements,
particularly on a systemic increase in the
funding of the universities by releasing N100
billion yearly to federal universities
consecutively for four years effective from
January, 2012.
But more than a year that the circular on it
was released, government had not made
available a kobo in respect of the
undertaking, she stated.
On the Earned allowances which include
“occupational hazard allowance,
responsibility allowance and head section/
unit allowance,” the NASU president said the
government has also not made any effort to
include it in the national budget, even though
it has accumulated to huge arrears.
Also, the three non-teaching unions faulted
the report of a Needs Assessment Committee
of Nigerian public universities headed by
Professor Mahmud Yakubu in 2012.
Iliya stated that such important committee
was instituted without the inclusion of
members of the non-teaching staff of
Nigerian public universities, and most
especially the students who are the major
stakeholders.
Iliya said: “As expected, the report of the
committee was full of misrepresentation of
facts, inflated figures and badly skewed data
against the non-teaching staff in the
university system, thereby misinforming both
the public and the government.”
Iliya called on well-meaning Nigerians to
prevail on the government to implement the
agreement it freely enter into with the
workers to avoid plunging the nation’s
universities into another round of needless
crisis.
She noted that the non-teaching unions had
exercise serious restraints to embark on
strikes in the interest of the students,
government and in protection of good
academic standard.
She said: “As responsible unions who are
sensitive to public opinions and have interest
of students and the national interest at heart,
we have been weary of strike actions in the
past and have done everything humanly
possible to sustain industrial peace in our
universities even in the face of government
insensitivity and pressure from our
members.”
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