NASU To Start Nationwide Strike Next Week

The deplorable state of the university
system since members of the Academic
Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)
embarked on an indefinite strike to
demand that the government make
good its promises as stated in the 2009 agreement the government had with the
union, may even go worse as the Non-
Academic Staff Union of Educational and
Associated Institutions (NASU), Tuesday
threatened to commence a nationwide
strike from next week. National General Secretary of the union,
Mr. Peters Adeyemi, dropped the hint in
Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, yesterday
during the National Executive Council
(NEC) meeting of the union. According to him, “The decision to
embark on the nationwide strike is due
to the fact that the members of the
union had not been paid for two months
despite working to keep university
system running during the ongoing ASUU strike.” He said: “NASU will start its own strike
action next week because we have been
working and government has refused to
pay our salaries, and for us, it does not
make sense to continue to keep the
system running when we are not paid.” He added: “The reason for this is not
known to us. Workers in all federal
universities are not paid their salaries
right now and that’s a big challenge.
Government has not paid our salary for
August and as we are talking now, today is September 24, they are effectively
owing us two months salary and there’s
no way we can continue to do this work
on empty stomach, while they run
around the globe with heavy stomach.” The NASU General Secretary, who said no
reason was adduced for their non-
payment, added, “the unfortunate thing
is that they have no explanation for non-
payment of our salaries. “That’s enough patience on our part
despite the fact that we have our grouse
before with the federal government;
that things are not running well. But we
think as Nigerians and parents, we don’t
have to unnecessarily ground the system. But if you take this our maturity
and level-headedness to mean stupidity,
them of course, people that complain
that we in the university system have
ruined the future of students by going
on too many strikes imposed on us by government will have no reason not to
understand, if we go on our own strike
next week,” he stressed Also speaking, the national president of
NASU, Mr. Ladi Iliya, blamed the National
Assembly for fighting on their political
interest and future at the expense of
welfare of Nigerians. The NASU president, who said the
National Assembly should have
deliberated on issue of persistent
insecurity and ASUU strike when it
resume session, described the attitude
of the legislators as shameful.