The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to embark on an industrial action if the 13 months salaries of over 1,000 of its members were not paid.
Dr. Lazarus Maigoro, Chairman of the University of Jos chapter of the union said this in a statement on Saturday in Jos, adding the Federal Goverment has also withheld the check-off dues of these same members.
He accused the Accountant General of Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, for systematically denying the lecturers their remuneration even after government and the union had reached an agreement on non victimisation of its members after the last strike.
The chairman alleged that the affected members were being threatened to enroll into the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System(IPPIS) platform to enable them get their salaries.
He explained that despite the directives of President Muhammadu Buhari, that members of the union be paid their full renumeration, the AGF has denied these members their pay.
Maigoro said that the office of the AGF has continued to feed the public and some sections of government with false reasons over the matter, such as incorrect BVN numbers, incorrectly spelt and sequential arrangement of the names, among others.
But he added that such lame excuses were no longer tenable because the bursary departments have submitted the names of these colleagues severally to authorities, but the problem still persist.
“ASUU wants to bring to the attention of the Nigerian public the deliberate, systematic and unpatriotic actions of the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, on the future of Education in Nigeria.”
Idris, from all intent and purposes, is bent on withholding the salaries of over 1,000 members of ASUU spread across the country with more than 100 of such lecturers being members of our branch in University of Jos.
This is simply because they participated in the last strike and refused to enroll into the much discredited IPPIS, despite the non victimisation clause signed in the Memorandum of Action(MoA) that led to the suspension of the strike in December 2020.
“Despite the directive given by Mr President to pay the salary of all lecturers, the AGF has refused to pay their salaries ranging from four to thirteen months respectively.
He has completely violated the terms of agreement signed between our union and goverment.
More worrisome is the fact that while the AGF is refusing to pay these salaries, his staff are busy calling the affected lecturers and insisting they have to register with IPPIS before they are paid; some are even asked to forfeit a part of their salaries in order to be paid.
So it is very clear that this is a deliberate act on the part of the AGF and his staff.
Many of our members in University of Jos have not been paid salaries from February 2020 to date.
How they are expected to go to the classroom and teach beats my imagination.
It is not news, that our union have vowed to fight back at any cost in order to salvage our colleagues from his tyranny and unpatriotic act against not just ASUU members but the future of education in Nigeria and so, if nothing is urgently done, we will be force to take action,” Maigoro said.
Maigoro also said that the inability of government to pay it’s members other allowances, such as sabbatical, visiting, part time and contract staff was destroying the university system in the country.
“Apart from the refusal to pay the salary of our members, the lack of payment of allowances of sabbatical, visiting, part-time, contract staff is further killing the federal universities in Nigeria, and this is all because IPPIS.
The union has gotten to a stage where it may be forced to take drastic measures to save the lives and families of its members because their despair is also our collective despair.
We hope that whatever decision the union will not be misconstrued by the Nigerian public especially seeing the seeming silence of the public and the government over the complete violation of our 2020 MoA,”he said.
Maigoro called on the President Buhari to wade into the matter order to safe the affected members as well as safe the future of education in Nigeria.
