PANAPRESS
Panafrican News Agency
Primary, college teachers may join university teachers' strike in Nigeria
Lagos, Nigeria (PANA) - The crisis rocking the educational system in Nigeria may take a turn for the worse if threats from the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Senior Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) are anything to go by.
According to local newspapers, the NUT President, Micheal Olukoya, has said his union will join the striking members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in a solidarity strike while SSANU’s major complaint was the non-payment of the August salary of its members.
ASUU embarked on the strike 1 July, 2013, saying the measure would be “comprehensive, total and indefinite." The strike followed the non-implementation of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the union signed with the Federal Government in 2009.
The university teachers listed their demands as funding of university education, the Earned Allowance and the NEEDS assessment report, which was targetted at mass sack of the non-teaching staff working in the universities.
ASUU sources said that since 2009, several representations had been made to the government and the implementation committee set up by the government itself without results.
Last Thursday, the NUT also gave the Federal Government a two-weeks ultimatum to resolve its problem with ASUU to avert the total closure of all public schools in the country. The NUT is made up of teachers in public primary and secondary schools across Nigeria.
Olukoya, gave the ultimatum in Abuja at the end of the union’s meeting with teachers’ representatives across the country.
Olukoya stressed that members of the union would not hesitate to close down the nation’s schools, if the two parties failed to reach agreement after two weeks, adding that ‘’the current ASUU strike is nationalistic, patriotic and self-sacrificing’’.
SSANU's General Secretary, Mr. Promise Adewusi, said that the strike was being considered to protest the stoppage of the salaries of university workers without any justifiable explanation.
SSANU said it had already given directive to its members to mobilise for the strike, adding that it had become imperative for them to down tools following government’s failure to pay their outstanding August salary.
Sources close to the government said the Jonathan administration had offered ASUU 100 billion naira (about US$ 700 million) for infrastructure and 30 billion naira (about US$ 200,000) for earned allowances.
But ASUU said that the earned allowances, jointly calculated with the Federal Government and ASUU in the 2009 agreement, were 87 billion naira (about US$ 580 million) to cover allowances for three and a half years for thousands of lecturers in Nigerian universities.
It said "And that was agreed based on negotiations because we started from 127 billion naira and it was reduced to 107 billion naira before we now got to 15 percent of salary payment of each person."
-0- PANA VAO 28Sept2013
According to local newspapers, the NUT President, Micheal Olukoya, has said his union will join the striking members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in a solidarity strike while SSANU’s major complaint was the non-payment of the August salary of its members.
ASUU embarked on the strike 1 July, 2013, saying the measure would be “comprehensive, total and indefinite." The strike followed the non-implementation of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the union signed with the Federal Government in 2009.
The university teachers listed their demands as funding of university education, the Earned Allowance and the NEEDS assessment report, which was targetted at mass sack of the non-teaching staff working in the universities.
ASUU sources said that since 2009, several representations had been made to the government and the implementation committee set up by the government itself without results.
Last Thursday, the NUT also gave the Federal Government a two-weeks ultimatum to resolve its problem with ASUU to avert the total closure of all public schools in the country. The NUT is made up of teachers in public primary and secondary schools across Nigeria.
Olukoya, gave the ultimatum in Abuja at the end of the union’s meeting with teachers’ representatives across the country.
Olukoya stressed that members of the union would not hesitate to close down the nation’s schools, if the two parties failed to reach agreement after two weeks, adding that ‘’the current ASUU strike is nationalistic, patriotic and self-sacrificing’’.
SSANU's General Secretary, Mr. Promise Adewusi, said that the strike was being considered to protest the stoppage of the salaries of university workers without any justifiable explanation.
SSANU said it had already given directive to its members to mobilise for the strike, adding that it had become imperative for them to down tools following government’s failure to pay their outstanding August salary.
Sources close to the government said the Jonathan administration had offered ASUU 100 billion naira (about US$ 700 million) for infrastructure and 30 billion naira (about US$ 200,000) for earned allowances.
But ASUU said that the earned allowances, jointly calculated with the Federal Government and ASUU in the 2009 agreement, were 87 billion naira (about US$ 580 million) to cover allowances for three and a half years for thousands of lecturers in Nigerian universities.
It said "And that was agreed based on negotiations because we started from 127 billion naira and it was reduced to 107 billion naira before we now got to 15 percent of salary payment of each person."
-0- PANA VAO 28Sept2013
