By Sam Kayode
Ndume passes vote of no confidence on the federal government for giving half salaries to lecturers of federal universities
Senator Ali Ndume, representing Borno North at the National Assembly, says the half salary paid university lecturers by the federal government was one of the most Senseless actions of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
He therefore thumbs down the negotiators of the current impasse between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the government.
He said that most of the negotiators on the government side who have shown interest in the case have their kids studying abroad and may not bother about the decadence of the University system in Nigeria.
The Senator passed the vote of no confidence on the managers of the ASUU crisis in the last nine months adding that they have not done much in the management of the impass between the lecturers, ministry of education officials and the adamant government which has been unable to stick to the letters of the Babalakin agreement for the fixing of federal universities in the country.
” I am not satisfied with the negotiators who are handling this lingering matter. This is because they are not qualified to negotiate on behalf of parents of these kids. It’s clear because most of their own kids are outside the country schooling.
” I wish to call for a committee of well respected Nigerians to sit with ASUU to sit down with these intellectuals to solve the problem. Such respected Nigerians will achieve results and would be taken seriously.”
Ndume said he was totally against the half salary issued out to the lecturers in the Federal University as last month’s salary against what was the ideal when it was the federal government that broke the chain of implementation started by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The chair senate committee on Army regretted that the executive was reserving N8 trillion naira for recurrent expenditure in a budget of N20.5 trillion for 2023 while lecturers who went on strike to correct the anomalies in the system are being punished for no reason of theirs.
That to him was extremely unjust and unfair when we consider that all the demands of the professors were in order he told a gathering of newsmen in Maiduguri on Thursday.
” I suggest that the President should sign an executive order to make all public servants send their kids to public schools. This is because the federal government is not sincere at all about fixing the education sector in the country. They are only paying lip service to education.
” This half salary issue is one of the most senseless decisions the executive has ever taken so far. Instead of the lecturers having half salary, I would rather suggest that my own colleagues in the house take half salary for the sake of these patriotic academics.
” ASUU has a right to go on strike and they should have been given the benefit of the doubt that negotiations were going on throughout the eight months of the strike.
” They are members of the labour community and all the labour laws should cover them like other unions. The Federal government has not been sincere at all and they have no justification to give them half salaries. It is unjust and wrong and should be corrected ” said Ndume.
ASUU had gone on an eight month strike to press home their points for basic reforms of federal universities some of which are over 5 decades old without reforms and expansion.
One of the bitter demands of the academics is the inclusion of of the academics into the integrated payroll and personnel information system (IPPIS) which to some of the senior professors and Vice Chancellor is the most sinister decision taken by the federal government.
Minister of Labour Ngige had bragged that the lecturers would be given half salaries because they worked for only half of the month of October.
