Kassim Umaru, the University of Abuja’s chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has said that the union did not receive N100 billion from the Federal Government contrary to claims by Adamu Adamu, the minister of education.
Umaru disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday, during the union’s congress at the university’s mini campus in Gwagwalada where he reiterated that the strike was continuing. He blamed the government for the lingering industrial action, stating that the government exasperated all the sincere efforts the union made to end the strike.
He dismissed the N100 billion the Federal Government claimed to have approved for ASUU as part of the 2009 agreement, as untrue.
“Is there any document to our union? We should begin to ask them these questions. The students will have to be patient, it is a fight we have to do once and for all and it is a fight for the future of unborn children.
“We have no alternative than to do what we are doing and we must do it so that we can compete with the external world.
“In the entire world today nobody jokes with education. If you are talking of economy, or even cultural and social aspects of society, you must invest in education, no country jokes with education the way Nigeria is doing,” he said.
Read also: Reps ask NEPZA to refund N13.3bn to government’s coffer
The university don explained that ASUU will decide the next action to take as concerns the strike after the union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting billed for Sunday, August 28.
“At the end of the expiration of the ultimatum on Sunday, the needful will be done. As far as we are concerned, the Federal Government has not done anything to our various demands.
“The Federal Government should tell the Nigerian public what they have done. The two committees that were set up, the Nimi Briggs committee was set up, the Jubrin committee was set up and all these had their recommendations.
Umaru condemned the no-work-no-pay policy stand of the minister of education, describing it as going against the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the 1981 trade union Acts.
“Our salaries are always negotiated, it is not something you feel you can pay us, it is something that you have to sit down to talk and agree that you can pay us.
“As far as we concerned, our job is different from any other civil servants, it is the job you are going back to do, you are not paying for an hour you are paying for the job we have done so it is their responsibility to pay us and if they say they are not paying us, it is a joke taken too far.”
