The Federal Government has inaugurated a seven-man Re-negotiation Committee on the 2009 Agreements with university-based unions, including the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU),the Joint Action Committee of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union to resolve all the pending issues.
Both ASUU and the Joint Action Committee of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions gave the Federal Government two and there weeks ultimatum respectively, to pay their withheld salaries and implement their demands.
However, a statement signed by General Secretary, NASU, Peters Adeyemi and President, SSANU, Mohammed Ibrahim, lamented that the inauguration event held on Tuesday in Abuja appeared to have been primarily focused on ASUU, with the other unions seemingly included as an afterthought.
The statement said the inauguration speech by the Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman, centred almost entirely on ASUU, with only brief and cursory mentions of the other unions.
It added that at the venue of the inauguration, the two unions (SSANU and NASU) witnessed a most humiliating experience where the President of ASUU was placed on what was referred to as the “Responsibility” table and the presidents of other unions looked on from their positions of “irresponsibility”.
“From the proceedings, it was obvious that NASU and SSANU were only invited as mere spectators to give a semblance of legitimacy and acceptability to an already concluded renegotiation exercise.
“That the President of ASUU alone was invited to give a response on behalf of other unions without consultation and he ended up speaking on behalf of his union clearly showed that the opinions and experiences of other unions do not matter in the renegotiation.
“The proceedings of the entire inauguration have clearly shown the imbalance of relationships and the obvious unfair treatment that would be meted out to NASU and SSANU if the renegotiation process continues in this manner.”
“Consequently, the JAC of NASU and SSANU hereby condemns the entire charade that took place today, in the name of an inauguration, as it signals a potential bias in favour of academic staff in the upcoming negotiations, to the detriment of non-teaching staff and therefore expresses our misgivings about the process of the inauguration,” it read.
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