The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational Associated Institutions will resume today (Monday) after the seven-day warning strike they embarked upon last week.
Their sister union, the National Association of Academic Technologists of the University, also embarked on a three-day strike last week.
The three unions are protesting the withheld salaries following a prolonged strike they embarked upon in 2022.
The administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari invoked withheld their salaries by invoking the policy of ‘No Work, No Pay’.
However, President Bola Tinubu recently ordered the payment of the withheld salaries of members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, who had also embarked on a strike in 2022.
As a result, NASU, SSANU and NAAT called on the government to pay them too, threatening to embark on a strike.
Amid the strike last week, the striking unions met with the Federal Government but the meeting ended in a deadlock.
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 emphasised that aside agitation for the payment of their withheld salaries, there was the need for the Federal Government to consider the renegotiation of 2009 FGN/NASU and SSANU agreements and payment of N50bn earned allowances.
Also speaking, National President, NAATS, Mr Ibeji Nwokoma, revealed that the union went on strike between March and August 2022, stating that the Federal Government, through the Minister of Education, announced publicly at a stakeholders’ meeting that all staff of the university should be paid, saying they were surprised that the non-teaching staff were exempted.
“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.”