Once more, ASUU blames Gbajabiamila for deceit, Reps conflict.
The house of reps has chided the Leader of the Scholastic Staff Association of Colleges, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, over his case that the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, mislead the college instructors into canceling their eight-month strike.
In a proclamation gave on Wednesday, chairman of the House committe on Media and Public Affairs, Benjamin Kalu, expressed that never did Gbajabiamila concur with ASUU that speakers would be paid for the period they were protesting.
In the articulation named ‘House of Reps reaction to Osodeke’s claims of deception against Mr Speaker,’ Kalu called attention to that the National Government really kept the pay rates for the period colleges were closed down.
However, Osodeke, in a meeting with The PUNCH, demanded that ASUU canceled its strike on October 14, 2022, because of a promissory letter endorsed by Gbajabiamila expressing that a piece of the association’s compensation would be paid.
A copy of the promissory letter made available and signed by Gbajabiamila, read partly, “After exhaustive deliberations, which necessitated several visits by Mr Speaker to the President, and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), the Honourable Speaker called for another meeting with officials of ASUU, on Monday, October 10, 2022.
“The meeting came to the following resolutions: the no-work-no-pay policy of the government remains a subsisting policy for all industrial actions, but the government will on the special ground concede ASUU to pay a part of its salaries during the strike period.” Furthermore, Osodeke made sense of that the government made an extraordinary concession when they met with them, saying FG vowed to pay part of our excesses.
e added, “When Gbajabiamila wrote to us, he said the government would pay part of the money and it was based on the information that we called off the strike. And we have called off the strike for over two months now, yet, we have not received anything.
“How do you want our members to feel after we told them and showed them evidence that the Speaker promised to pay partly?’’
Notwithstanding, protecting the speaker, Kalu blamed a portion of the cases made by the ASUU president in his new media interview.
The assertion read, “For the record, at no point did the Speaker of the House of Representatives commit to offset the arrears of salaries owed to union members for the time they were on strike.
The House of Representatives helped resolve the strike by making commitments to improve the welfare package of university lecturers and revitalisation funds to improve the infrastructure and operations of federal universities.
“These commitments are reflected in the 2023 Appropriation Bill, which includes N170,000,000,000.00) to provide a level of increment in the welfare package of university lecturers and an additional N300,000,000,000.00 in revitalization funds.”
In the mean time, saying something regarding what is happening, the NANS Zone C has encouraged the National Government to respect its concurrence with ASUU to forestall another modern activity.
The affiliation likewise encouraged the public authority to put more accentuation on appropriate financing of the training area.
It settled on the decision in a report gave toward the finish of its show/political race to choose new administration that will lead its exercises for one year, held at the college of Agriculture science and Technology, Lafia, Nasarawa State.
The report, which was endorsed by Kayode Adebayo and Muhammed Saba likewise asked federal and state governments to accomplish other things on financing security organizations to handle security circumstances right now stopping exercises in the North central and the country at large.
