Minister of Education
The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu has suggested that Nigerian students looking for compensation for the wasted time caused as a result of the strike action by ASUU should drag the leaders of strike unions to court for damages. This, he said among other issues on Thursday at the State House in Abuja on his reactions toward the current academic strike action.
It is no longer news that Nigerian students have stayed at home for more than six months as a result of the strike action embarked by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) over the demand of the actualization of some agreements made between them and the Federal Government.
This has caused a lot of tensions on everyone concerned in the country as Nigerian students across the nation, and the Labour Unions in support of ASUU have taken to the streets at different times to protest on the perceived insensitivity of the Federal Government towards education.
Moreover, lot of talks have been held between the Federal Government and ASUU which has yielded negative results, thereby making the strike action by the Academic Staff Union of University linger than expected.
In a question and answer segment with journalists, the Minister maintained that everyone, even the economy is hit by the strike action, and not just the students and when asked about compensation, he said if the students need some compensation, they should drag the leaders of strike unions to court for damages.
“They should probably take the leaders of the strike unions to court, maybe the court will award damages and see how they pay to compensate them; the Federal Government has insisted on a ‘no work, no pay’ decision for lecturers.”
The Minister also expressed that ASUU and other unions have a way of abusing strike actions as they see it as a means of extortion which calls for a curb.
“I have six unions I am dealing with and five of them; Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), Colleges of Education Academic Staff (COASU), the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian University (SSANU), Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities and Allied Institutions (NASU), and the National Association of Academic Technologists, (NAAT) have agreed with the FG” he thereby gave a positive remark on their possibility of them calling off the strike action in a week time, but he cannot say the same for ASUU.
” …the offer made by the government, and I want to tell you in principal all of the unions accepted it, the only exception was ASUU that gave me two other conditions which I told them this would not be acceptable to the government but I had to report back but it was stand down…”
The Minister further commended ASUP for agreeing with the FG and not embarking on strike and also further explained that the situation for ASUU is that they agree to call off the strike if the Federal Government would pay for the months they didn’t work and the ministers say no.
” what they are asking is, they can accept this if Federal Government will pay the salary for the months they have not worked and I told them the Federal Government will not”
He went further to say that the stand of the Government on the no work, no pay policy is a penalty to address the excesses of the unions.
“I believe teachers will think twice before they join strikes if they know at the end, they are not going to be paid. He insisted that ‘if there is no work, there will be no pay for it.” He believes this will be a strong element that will prevent them from going on strike in the future.
He made known that a new salary scale has been given to the unions and they have accepted and both SAANU and NASU will probably be in a position to call it off but ASUU is resisting because of their demand that they should be paid for the months they didn’t work; he concluded.
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