On Friday, the Joint Action Committee of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational (NASU) and Associated Institutions threatened that they would embark on strike if the Federal government failed to pay withheld members’ salaries.
News About Nigeria reports that the salaries were said to have been seized by the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari during their strike in 2022.
However, the Bola Tinubu-led government released four months of withheld salaries to members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) but failed to release that of non-academic staff.
Reacting to this in a joint letter signed by the President of SSANU, Muhammed Ibrahim and General Secretary of NASU, Peters Adeyemi, the non-academic staff decried the move by the government, questioning the rationale behind substituting them from the payment.
In the letter, the unions told the Federal government that they had endured for so long and would no longer be able to continue to assure the government of industrial peace in universities if they were denied payment.
The unions also threatened to ground administrative and corporate governance Universities should the Federal government fail to meet their demands as they can no longer exercise patience.
“If nothing is done by the Federal Government to positively address this situation and respond to our previous letters to them, the members of the two Unions may be forced to meet soon to take all lawful and stringent decisions on the matter,” the letter partly reads.
