The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has accused the Federal Government of shortchanging its members in the payment of salaries.
The organisation said none of the universities got 100% payment while government continued to frustrate the payment of four months salaries to its members at the University of Maiduguri and Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike.
The President of ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, in an interview with Sunday PUNCH, said government was delaying the payment using excuses of issues with their bank documents which, he believed, must have been sorted out.
ASUU has been on strike following disagreement with government on some irreconcilable differences including the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.
Ogunyemi said, “I can say clearly that we have two universities pending, though I learnt that there are some issues with their documents which I believe they must have sorted out now. The University of Maiduguri and Michael University of Agriculture, Umudike are the two universities that are yet to be paid from February to May.
“There is one other dimension I need to underline that there is no university so far that was paid 100%. In all the universities that were paid, those that were not paid will range from 20% to over 70% nd that is giving our members a lot of concern. We believe that if the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation is sincere enough, by now, all those problems should have been sorted out.
“They keep talking about some information not well provided, some problem with bank details and things like that. But I know that each time they mention this, our members have always gone back with the local leadership to sort out the matter with the university.”
Asked if he would say that the government is complying with the demands of ASUU and which of the two parties is winning the war, Ogunyemi said the union was not competing for attention.
He said, “We are not competing for attention, we are not competing for supremacy. But what we are saying is that government needs to sort out some issues about universities because our universities are in states of disrepair. On the issue of IPPIS, IPPIS was not the mean reason ASUU went on strike.”
