The federal government has said it would continue to engage with the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) over the threat of a strike by the two university-based labour unions.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, stated this while fielding questions from newsmen over the strike action threatened by the unions.
Naija News recalls that SSANU and NASU had threatened to embark on a seven-day warning strike beginning March 18, 2024.
They warned that if the Federal Government does not respond to their demands by Monday, March 18, 2024, they will close all university hostels and cut off all university power.
Speaking after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on Wednesday, Idris said the matter didn’t come up for discussion during the meeting, but assured that the government was addressing the issue.
He said, “Government will continue to engage them (SSANU and NASU). All the associations involved in that (planned strike), government will continue to engage them to find lasting solution to the problem.”
Asked why SSANU and NASU and the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT, were excluded in the directive by President Bola Tinubu that the university workers who embarked on a prolonged strike in 2022 and their salaries withheld by Muhammadu Buhari government as a result of the invocation of the”No work, no pay,” policy, should be paid four months salary, he said, the government would continue to engage with the unions in order to settle the problem.
According to him, “Government will continue to engage them, they are all Nigerians. They are all working within Nigeria. Nigerian government has respect for every worker in Nigeria and we will continue to engage them.”
The Minister failed to give a specific response to the question of why only ASUU was paid, and others were left out as he simply responded, “Government will take every right step it deems necessary to ensure that everybody gets whatever is legitimate to him or her.”
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