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Activities in the nation’s universities will to- day be halted as the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions(NASU) have written their branches to commence an industrial action.
NASU general secretary, Comrade Peters Adeyemi, confirmed to our correspondent that the strike will go ahead despite an earlier meeting with government officials led by the minister of labour and employment, Chris Ngige on Tuesday.
“There is no decision to stop the strike from taking off please,” he said in response to an enquiry by our correspondent. SSANU president, Mohammed Ibrahim, said over the phone that union members have been briefed on the commencement of the industrial action. He said, “The strike continues while we await the inputs from our branches. We have briefed them what the government has given so far.
“We were only able to discuss two issues out of seven before we got into a deadlock. One of them is IPPIS, they said they are going to form two committees. One of them is to look at the immediate problems, the mutilation of salary, those who have not been able to be paid.
“The other one is a bigger committee that will look at the allowances that were removed when we enrolled into IPPIS. This is not something that will finish in the next one month, and there is no timeline for the assignment. The other issue is the National Minimum Wage arrears, and they said they have submitted it for a supplementary budget. Even that one, there is no date for payment because when was the real budget passed to be talking about supplementary.
“There is no end in sight, so in the meantime, they pleaded with us but we said we don’t have the power to suspend the strike, we are going back to our congresses. Congresses will hold tomorrow (Friday) all over Nigeria to determine the state of affairs.
All the other issues, we have deferred them to next week which is for Thursday. So, our strike starts from midnight tomorrow (Friday). We have already written our branches to commence strike tomorrow,” he insisted. A copy of the notice signed by SSANU national president, Mohammed Ibrahim, and NASU general secretary, Peters Adeyemi, was obtained by our correspondent yesterday.
The non-teaching staff in the universities had announced that they would embark on a nationwide strike from February 5, 2021 over the federal government’s handling of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, sharing formula of the N40 billion earned academic allowances and non-payment of arrears of the new minimum wage.
Source: leadership.ng
