Members of Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) and Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) have insisted that there is no going back on its February 5 date scheduled to commence nationwide industrial action.
Their decision comes the conciliation meeting convened by Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige in Abuja on Tuesday to stop the non-teaching staff of the universities from embarking on the strike.
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Although the minister told journalists after the meeting that most issues raised by the unions have been addressed, leaders of the unions insist that most of their critical demands were yet to be attended to.
The committee however said contentious issues that informed the decision to embark on a nationwide industrial action include inconsistencies in IPPIS payment and the delay in the renegotiation of FGN/ ASUU/SSANU 2009 Agreement.
The striking non-teaching staff are demanding that their members be taken off the government’s Integrated Personnel Payroll Information (IPPIS).
Others are the non-payment of retirement benefits to former members, non-constitution of visitation panels to universities, poor funding of universities, teaching staff usurping the headship of non-teaching units, among others.
The joint action committee of SSANU and NASU hereby resolves as follows: That members of NASU/SSANU shall embark on an indefinite, comprehensive and total strike with effect from February 5, 2021.
Two weeks’ notice effective from today, Friday, January 22, 2021, is hereby given to the government and relevant stakeholders of this development.
He added;
The October 2020 memorandum of understanding (MOU) resolved that the compliance of SSANU/NASU with respect to IPPIS would be corrected within two weeks.
But three months after, there has been no correction of these anomalies leading to a high level of restiveness among our members who have been short-changed on account of the problem caused by IPPIS.
