Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has faulted the federal government’s policy of no-work-no-pay on its members after suspending its seven-and-a-half-month industrial action.
The union also appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to consider their plight having suspended the action in obedience to the order of the industrial court, saying the government has been unfair to them.
ASUU chairman, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, Prof Chike Ugwuene, made the appeal at a special congress/protest rally organised to express their anger over the policy.
Ugwuene reminded the government that after suspending the action, they went back to where the stopped to teach, conducted examinations and released the results to cover lost grounds.
He lamented that after its demonstration of trust and patriotism by calling off the strike, ASUU is now being rewarded with pro-rata payment of salary which he said the academics would never accept.
The chairman criticised the minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, for vowing that the federal government was going to implement no-work no-pay policy on lecturers.
Most of the inscriptions on the placards carried by the members were directed at castigating the minister for his perceived role in persevering and intimidating the university teachers.
Some of the placards read: ‘Ngige is a foe, not a friend’; ‘Nigeria, beware of Ngige, an enemy of education’; ‘Take it or leave it is against the privilege of collective bargaining’; ‘ASUU mean well for Nigeria’, among others.
“We are here to cry out so that the public can hear what government is doing to us. Government is pushing us to the wall and we can break that wall,” he warned.
ASUU president, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke said contrary to insinuations, the action was not called off due to the intervention of the House of Representatives leadership but in obedience to a court order.
He said that the rot in the education sector was a symptom of the manner those at the helm of affairs are running the country aground leading to the collapse of almost every sector.
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