ASUU urges minister to direct AG to clear members salary arrears

Coordinator of the Owerri /Port Harcourt zone of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Comrade Uzo Onyebinama, yesterday, urged the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, to impress on the Accountant General of the Federation to immediately clear all members’ outstanding salaries.

He also renewed call for forensic auditing of the IPPIS and its administrators. Onyebinama, in a statement said based on the minister’s utterances on television recently, the body is not sure, which government officials will now dialogue with ASUU over the strike and whom those officials are reporting to.

He said that the discordant tunes from government officials on the matter indicate a free for all situation.

According to him, the claim by the minister that headstrong lecturers in Federal universities were receiving their wages suggested to ASUU that the so-called conciliator is oblivious of the issues in the matter he is conciliating.

He stated that many lecturers in various Federal universities are owed eight months salaries from February to September 2020, while those of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike and University of Maiduguri are owed five months from April to September 2020. He added that others are owed three months from July to September 2020. Onyebinama said: “That the minister is unaware of this fact is shocking.”

With the Accountant General leading, other headstrong Federal Government officials are deliberately using the lecturers’ wages as a hungry weapon to coerce them into IPPIS and thus feed fat from the N140m dollar loan for the Federal Civil Service Reform.”