Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions, NASU, has vowed not to resume work until the Federal Government settles the N9 billion arrears owed its members.
The Joint Action Committee, JAC, of the three non-teaching staff in the universities, comprising NASU, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU and the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT, had embarked on strike December last year over non-payment of Earned Allowances, among other things.
Speaking Tuesday in Abuja, Comrade Peter Adeyemi, General Secretary of NASU, said the union would sustain the on-going strike in research and development institutions across the country.
Adeyemi stated that the union would do anything possible, but within the law, to ensure that government met their demand, including staging a protest at the National Assembly.
He blamed the current strike in research institutes on the non-implementation of the 2010 agreement by the Federal Government.
He said: “The non-implementation of the agreement we reached with the Federal Government in 2010 is the reason we decided to go into this action. It has got to a stage where we have to take our collective destinies in our own hands.
“It is unfortunate that we are in a country where the government is paying lip service to research and development. Developed economies of the world focus more on research for economic breakthroughs because there is no country that can develop without research. Therefore, our research institutes would be shut down until our demands are fully met.”
Adeyemi stated that Chief Audu Ogbe, the Minister of Agriculture, has acknowledged that the protesting workers, indeed, had a genuine case.
He stated further: “The Federal Government has acknowledged that we have a legitimate case and that it is government that is not doing what it ought to do.
”The Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Audu Ogbe, confirmed to us at a meeting we held with him on December 7, 2017, that the demands of the Joint Action Committee of Research Institutes are legitimate and that he and his team are going to raise an appropriate request for the needed resources to be made available for our members to be paid the 12 months arrears that have been outstanding since 2010.
“It was also agreed at that meeting that other non-monetary side of the agreement would be attended to by putting in place appropriate machinery to address them. But it is very unfortunate that since 7thDecember 2017, which is more than one month, we have not heard a word from the Minister.”
Adeyemi, who is also the deputy President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, berated the Federal Government for allowing a critical sector of the economy as research and projects to be left to remain idle for more than two months.
“It is our considered opinion in NASU that no serious government would allow the current scenario to take place in research institutions,” he said.
He gave reasons for industrial unrest in the country, pointing out that the inability of government officials to implement tenets of agreement entered into had remained one key factor.
He said: “One of the challenges confronting our country today is the rascality of those in government who go into reaching agreements with various unions without a road map on how to implement the tenets of the agreement.
”Then at the end of the day, when unions begin agitation and demand for the implementation of the agreement, they will then come up shamefully to threaten ‘no work no pay’ slogan.
“Nigerians have seen that government is unable to implement the ‘no work no pay’ policy because unions always fulfil all the laid down rules and guidelines before embarking on strike.”
