Govt owes 600 ASUU ATBU members eight months’ salaries – Union leader

The union said the members affected are those in the College of Medical Sciences, especially those in Biochemistry and outside the clinical.

The ATBU ASUU Chairperson, Ibrahim Inuwa, who was flanked by other executives disclosed this at a press briefing held at the Union’s Secretariat on Thursday.

He stated that the immediate past Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige was responsible for the nonpayment of the members’ salaries.

The text of the briefing was titled, “Discriminatory payments of our members’ salary during the ASUU 2022 National Strike.”

Inuwa said, “It has become necessary for the Union to call the attention of the Nigerian State to the ploy by the former Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr Chris Ngige, to divide and break the resoluteness of our members during the Union’s 2022 national strike that lasted almost eight months. At the peak of our national strike, Dr Ngige deceptively told Nigerians that lecturers in the College of Medical Sciences of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi were not on strike.

“To convince Nigerians, Dr Ngige claimed that lecturers under the umbrella of the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria wrote to him through the University Vice Chancellor dissociating themselves from the ASUU national strike.

“As a ploy, Dr Ngige presented MDCAN as a purely academic Union. He hid from the public the fact that not all Medical and Dental Consultants operating in the teaching hospitals are core staff of the academic unit that forms the College of Medical Sciences of the University.”

The ATBU’s ASUU chair stated that “Under this guise, Dr Ngige made a case to the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation for some lecturers in the CMS of the University to be paid. If it was true that lecturers in the CMS of the University were working during the strike, this would have given the Medical students a level edge over their mates from other Faculties of the University. Unfortunately, this is not the case, because our members in all the academic units of the University were on strike.

“Virtually all members that are not part of the College of the Medical Sciences were not paid. We have a substantial number of our members in the College of Medical Sciences, especially those in Biochemistry and outside the clinical were also not paid. We have more than 600 members that were not paid.”

Speaking further, Inuwa said: “The Union wonders why a Minister who took an oath to ethically conduct himself in accordance with the dictates of the Constitution of the country will allow ego to take him this far. It was obvious that the former Minister allows ego rather than the Nigerian Constitution to guide his judgments on matters of national interest.”

Asked why the Union is just speaking out after about one year, he said that immediately after the information was made public, they had to set up a committee that did preliminary investigations to confirm if what the then Minister said was true.

“In fact, we got the Secretary of MDCAN who happens to be a lecturer in the university here and we engaged him and they dissociated themselves that nothing like that happened and said that they were on strike.

“He reiterated the position of the union that MDCAN, as an association, has Consultants that are not lecturers in the university but are employed with the Teaching Hospital. Some are Consultants that are outsourced to come and conduct part of medical training in the Teaching Hospital. So it took time for us to unravel this,” he added.

Inuwa called on the Federal Government to “address this unfair treatment” meted on academics in Nigerian public Universities.