The Academic Staff Union of Universities, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchu branch has disclosed that the Federal Government was insensitive to the plight of its members.
The union accused the government of being “deceitful” on the issue of the Earned Academic Allowances to members.
This was stated by the ASUU Chairperson, ATBU branch, Ibrahim Inuwa while speaking to journalists at a press conference on Friday at the Union’s Secretariat in Bauchi.
He said, “For us, we are not insensitive – for the federal government to drag its feet on a 2009 agreement, it means it is the government that has been insensitive to our demands. And don’t forget, in 2020, we signed a Memorandum of Action with them, and all the items in that agreement were tied to timelines. As it is, we’ve exhausted all the timelines, and the government has not honoured the agreements they willfully signed.
“The federal government has been insensitive to the challenges in the public universities. To us, we look at the call by the government that we should shelve that strike as a ploy to continue dragging their feet because it is obvious. The politicians have started beating the drums for the next general elections and we know their antics; they drag you till you have any new administration, and that administration will tell you to bear with it because it is new, but as far as we are concerned, the government is a continuum!
“Our demands are tangible enough: if he (President Mohammadu Buhari) had done enough, it would have been obvious for them to tell us. If they have any evidence, let them put them before the general public that they’ve done this and that; they are just being deceitful because they pay some peanuts out of the allowances and they go on air to say they’ve settled our Earned Academic Allowances.”
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