NASU, SSANU Begins 2-week Nationwide Boycott Strike Tomorrow
Activities on university campuses may be grounded from tomorrow.
Non-teaching staff are set to down tools.
The workers are seeking payment of their four-month salary arrears and to resume the payment of the N35,000 wage award announced in October last year by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Their umbrella body – the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) – resolved o the action during their 48th regular National Executive Council meeting in Benin, Edo State on June 27 and 28.
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) and SSANU had on June 20, 2024, sent a letter to Education Minister, Prof Tahir Mamman, informing him that their members would begin a work boycott in two weeks if their demands were not met.
The ultimatum ends tomorrow.
‘’Recall SSANU and other unions were compelled by the government to embark on strike in 2022 over the government’s refusal to honour a collective bargaining agreement willingly signed by all parties. At the end of the strike, the then Muhammadu Buhari Government further signed an elaborate agreement among which was the non-victimisation clause.
In the letter by NASU General Secretary Peters Adeyemi and SSANU President Mohammed Ibrahim, the two unions accused the government of “neglect and insincerity.”
In a communiqué issued yesterday by its President, SSANU accused the government of partiality and dribbling its leadership on a 2009 agreement it signed with the university union.
Calling for the constitution of a new committee to further take action on the implementation of the pact, SSANU said it was dismayed that after all promises by Prof Mamman, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Nkiruka Onyejeocha, and House of Representatives that the arrears would be paid, the government has continued to play games even after it suspended ‘’a one- week warning strike in March.”
