President Muhammadu Buhari has been given a seven-day deadline by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) to stop deducting illegally from lecturers’ salaries at public universities.
According to Naija News, the Federal Government withheld the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) members’ salaries after they went on strike for more than eight months.
Following a court order, the ASUU strike that began on February 14th, 2022, came to an end on October 14th. President Buhari’s administration only paid lecturers for 18 working days in October, days after the strike was called off.
Since then, stakeholders have expressed concern over the development. In a statement released on Saturday by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, the incumbent government explained why it had only paid the lecturers half of their salaries, pointing out that ASUU members had received their October salaries pro rata.
The ministry claims that pro-rata was used because employees cannot be paid for work that has not been completed and that Chris Ngige, the minister of labor and employment, never instructed the Accountant General of the Federation to give university lecturers half pay.
However, in response to the government’s stance, SERAP said in a succinct statement on its social media on Sunday that it has ordered the president to undo the lecturer’s salary deduction that was made illegally within the next seven days.
The statement read:
We’ve asked President Buhari to reverse within 7 days the apparently illegal deductions from the salaries of ASUU members or face legal action. Paying lecturers half salaries for going on strike is unlawful, and a deliberate attempt to make ASUU a lame duck.