ASUU Strike: The No-Work, No-Pay Stand-off

As acrimonious as the most recent soundbites from them have been, it’s relieving to listen to either side of the protracted industrial dispute within the nation’s universities speaking once more on what ought to occur after the strike is named off. Prior to now, mum had been the phrase from the Minister of Schooling, as college students of public universities vegetate at house with their future being blatantly taken from them. The federal government of President Muhammadu Buhari has hitherto proven a “provocative indifference” to the economic dispute, which began on February 14, 2022, even because the Tutorial Employees Union of Universities (ASUU) is bent on having its means. If the historical past of earlier strikes and their decision is something to go by, the present exchanges or spat between each events is a telltale signal that the debilitating motion is in its twilight, though this optimism is attenuated by the present grandstanding and refined blackmail over the casus belli normally related to an motion that has run its course.

Experiences from Tuesday’s assembly between each events have it that members of the Professor Nimi Briggs re-negotiation Committee didn’t desk any new supply aside from pleading with the lecturers to droop the continued strike, with guarantees that their issues shall be included within the 2023 finances. The management of ASUU, who would have none of that, staged a walkout from the negotiation, which lasted about three hours. The ASUU President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, would later comply with with an announcement the place he disclosed that the union informed the federal authorities by the ministry of training to return to the New Draft Settlement of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Renegotiation Committee, whose work spanned a complete of 5 and half years as an illustration of excellent religion. He added that “the Munzali Jibril-led renegotiation committee submitted the primary Draft Settlement in Could 2021, however the authorities’s official response didn’t come till about one 12 months later! Once more, awards offered by the Nimi Briggs-led Crew got here throughout in a way of take-it-or-leave-it on a sheet of paper. No severe nation on this planet treats their students this fashion.”

However this grouse of the lecturers, the federal authorities feels ok to encourage college students affected by the extended shutdown of the colleges to “take ASUU to court docket” and declare damages incurred over the interval the strike lasted. This place was conveyed by the Minister of Schooling, Adamu Adamu, who said that there must be penalties and even deterrence for the over six-month shutdown of the nation’s public universities. Talking yesterday on the Ministerial Media Briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Crew on the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Adamu disclosed that “all contentious points between the federal government and ASUU had been settled besides the hunt for members’ salaries for the interval of the strike be paid, a requirement that Buhari has flatly rejected.” In an obvious reference to the no-work-no-pay coverage of the federal authorities pertaining to strikes, he identified that the federal government refused the lecturers’ demand to be paid the wage backlog as a result of it believes there needs to be penalties for his or her motion.

It might be recalled that the federal authorities utilized this measure to members of the Joint Well being Providers Union (JOHESU), whose salaries have been withheld for the three months they have been on strike in 2018. It was on the level of approving the discharge of funds for the salaries of resident medical doctors who have been on strike in September and October 2021 that the President “pardoned” the well being staff by ordering the cost of their seized salaries. Buhari believes that ASUU mustn’t simply get away with shutting public universities all this whereas. It’s onerous to fault this stance since Part 43 of the Commerce Dispute Act 2004 prohibits wage cost to hanging staff. Extra so, the federal cupboard had accepted a 2017 white paper on the report of a technical committee that was meant to stem the tide of business disputes within the nation, leveraging the above legislation. We additionally recall that in January 2014, a rights lawyer prayed the Nationwide Industrial Court docket sitting in Abuja to compel the college lecturers to refund the 5 months’ salaries paid to them by the federal authorities whereas ASUU was on strike, stressing that the lecturers have been paid in violation of Commerce Disputes Act.

In response to the federal authorities’s insistence on the non-payment of the lecturers over the economic motion, ASUU has asserted that the affected college students could as nicely neglect about unfinished tutorial classes. Talking with Channels TV, Osodeke mentioned, “If we agree (to the federal government’s menace), due to this fact, the lectures we should always have given (to college students) for 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 [sessions], must be allowed to go, so we begin a brand new session, 2022/2023, in September… Once we return right this moment, we’re going to begin from the 2020/2021 session. For these two units of scholars admitted by JAMB, we should train them over these intervals to make sure that we meet up with the system. So, we’re going to do the backlog of the work we now have left behind. We aren’t going to start out right this moment and say: ‘This session is 2022/2023. Subsequently, all these two units of individuals which have been admitted by JAMB are cancelled. We have now to take one other admission for the 2023/2024 session’.” What is evident from the current deadlock is that it boils all the way down to the lecturers’ emoluments with none pretension that their “Aluta” is for higher funding and enchancment of dilapidated infrastructure within the universities.

This present stand-off has thrown up a scenario the place it’ll both be no-work-no-pay or no-pay-no-work. But, a easy transposition of the phrases in each phrases presents them as the identical. The federal government’s no-work-no-pay coverage on lecturers and ASUU’s no-pay-no-work additionally align in leaving college students with the shortest finish of the stick! Naija Information vehemently repudiates this exploitation of younger residents who might be the nation’s best contribution to the world. Solely just lately, an alumnus, Dr. Philip Ozuah, who now owns a series of hospitals in the US, donated USD1million to the College Medical Faculty, Ibadan. Many of the chief execs of blue chip corporations in America’s Silicon Valley, in addition to the top of the IMF, are Indians who obtained their first levels from Indian universities. How can this be the lot of Nigerian youth if the federal authorities and ASUU proceed this Russian roulette with the nation’s future?

Nigerian college students have suffered sufficient from incessant strikes, and each events should spare a thought for them and their long-suffering mother and father. As if their travail shouldn’t be sufficient, Minister Adamu even needs them to tug ASUU to court docket and, by so doing, expose themselves or their youngsters to vicious witch-hunting that received’t permit them to graduate or be admitted into every other public college when rusticated. In fact, the no-work-no-pay rule has been within the nation’s statute books because the Nineteen Nineties, however when negotiating an finish to a chronic strike, commerce unions at all times flash the “non-victimization” clause. We name on the Buhari authorities to make certain it needs to finish this pattern. Else it ought to again down now lest there shall be a scenario the place the continued strike unduly lingers, just for ASUU to be ultimately pardoned like JOHESU was.

Regrettably, the collective curiosity of Nigerian college students has been thrown out of the window. With a tutorial session already misplaced and distractions at each flip, these undergraduates would have forgotten what they have been taught earlier than the strike. When referred to as off, we demand that these college students be given a refresher on earlier lectures, somewhat than having to skip a semester’s or session’s course works, as ASUU is threatening in opposition to the no-work-no-pay. It’s counterproductive for the federal government to go this route, particularly as funds for the withheld salaries are already budgeted, disbursed, and now accruing pursuits in numerous banks. As ASUU checkmates the federal government with their no-pay-no-work, Naija Information expects that ought to the federal government succumb, they are going to be conscientious sufficient to not rush the poor college students by the syllabus or make them instantly sit for examinations in a bid to satisfy up with the calendar. Within the ultimate evaluation, this newspaper calls for that when embarking on extended strikes, the organized labour have to be able to pay members’ salaries. In spite of everything, commerce unions in different jurisdictions keep a strike fund from the place their members draw salaries every time they down instruments.