The federal government is set to pay the Congress of Nigerian University Academics, CONUA, the breakaway union from the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU eight-month backlog of salary.
CONUA was registered last month by the federal government as a parallel union to ASUU. The government has since appealed to ASUU to ensure that the two unions work amicably on the university campuses.
“We are talking with the ministers of Education and Labour on how to clear our salary. We don’t belong to ASUU. This is the position we have made known to the federal government since the strike began in February that the universities should be open,” a source in CONUA said on Monday.
The decision to pay the rival union, many say is divisive and likely to cause problems in the nation’s ivory towers.
The decision to pay CONUA comes on the back of last week’s rejection of half salary paid to ASUU members by the government, a month after they returned to work.
The university lecturers returned to work in October after a deal brokered between ASUU and the federal government by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiaila.
But the government insists it will not pay the returnee lecturers for the period they stayed away from work. The university lecturers have rejected the government’s position on the issue.
Their lawyer, Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, on Friday appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to pay the lecturers the backlog of salary for peace to reign.
In a statement on Sunday, Falana asked Buhari to ignore the advice of the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, not to pay ASUU members the complete salaries from February to October 2022.
The statement said, “Since the industrial action was called off, the public universities have adjusted their calendars to ensure that the 2021/2022 academic session is not cancelled. Consequently, students are currently taking lectures or writing examinations that were disrupted during the strike of the ASUU.
“Therefore, having regard to the facts and circumstances of the ASUU strike the doctrine of ‘no work, no pay’ is totally inapplicable as students who were not taught during the strike are currently attending lectures and writing examinations.
“Furthermore, it is public knowledge that the members of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors embarked on a strike that lasted two months last year.
“The federal government dragged the striking doctors to the national industrial court which ordered the NARD to call off the strike. As soon as the strike was called off, President Muhammadu Buhari jettisoned the ‘no work, no pay’ principle and ordered the payment of the salaries for the two months that the strike lasted.
“On that occasion, the President overruled Dr. Ngige in the interest of industrial harmony in the health sector.
In the same vein, the ASUU recently called off its 8-month old strike in compliance with the order of the national industrial court and the court of appeal.
“We are, therefore, compelled to call on President Buhari should ignore the advice of Dr. Ngige and direct the public universities to pay the full salary of each lecturer from February to October 2022.”
Meanwhile, the magazine learned that the National Executive Council of ASUU will meet today to decide on what to do next even as university students have called on the federal government to ensure that the lecturers to go back to strike.
