Following a seven-day warning strike last week, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational Associated Institutions will return back to work today, Monday.
The National Association of Academic Technologists of the University, its sister organization, also went on strike for three days last week.
The three unions went on a protracted strike in 2022 and are now challenging the delayed salaries.
By using the “No Work, No Pay” policy, the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari withheld their salary.
President Bola Tinubu, however, recently issued a directive to pay Academic Staff Union of Universities members who had also gone on strike in 2022 for their unpaid salary.
Consequently, NASU, SSANU, and NAAT threatened to go on strike and demanded that the government pay them as well.
The Federal Government and the striking unions met last week during the strike, but the discussion came to a standstill.
Giving an update on the issue during a Zoom meetng on Sunday, the National President, Joint Action Committee of SSANU, NASU, Mr Mohammed Ibrahim, said: “The strike ends tonight, (Sunday), everyone is resuming to work on Monday, and the government has till now not acceded to our demands. No payment has been made. The government is not responding to us.”
He added that the “National Executive Council of the unions would meet and discuss during the week to know the next line of action.”
Ibrahim stressed that in addition to their demands for the payment of their salaries that had been withheld, the Federal Government needed to take into account renegotiating the 2009 FGN/NASU and SSANU agreements as well as paying N50 billion in earned allowances.
In his remarks, Mr. Ibeji Nwokoma, National President of NAATS, said that the union went on strike from March to August 2022.
He claimed that the Federal Government, acting through the Minister of Education, had publicly declared at a stakeholders’ meeting that all university employees should receive compensation, and that they were shocked to learn that non-teaching staff was not included.
“We all went on a legitimate strike action; I want to believe something went wrong or somebody is trying to cheat us,” he said.
Also speaking, the Vice-President of SSANU, Dr Salaam Abdussobur, said, “We are not a strike-happy union. The reality is the fact that generally, the FG is treating the university staff with contempt. The government is not holistic in the way it treats the university workers, and the SSANU/NASU is treated lower in the cadre. For instance, Federal Government universities do not have Governing Councils, the government is turning the Vice-Chancellors into dictators.”
