On Thursday, January 26, 2022, the Court of Appeal will hear the Federal Government’s lawsuit against the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
According to WITHIN NIGERIA, the court would rule in favour or against the academic union’s eight-month strike, as well as the issue of withheld salaries as a result of the government’s no-work-no-pay policy.
This platform recalls that the federal government filed a lawsuit against ASUU before the National Industrial Court (NICN) in 2022 for its refusal to call off last year’s prolonged strike.
Despite the fact that the NICN ruled in favour of the government by ordering the striking lecturers to return to work.
As a result of this development, the union filed an appeal with the appellate court, citing 14 grounds, against the NICN’s decision.
In a related development, the government filed a lawsuit challenging ASUU’s failure to submit its audit report to the government.
According to reports on Saturday, the federal government rejected the ASUU’s four-year audit report because the organization ignored a letter from the Ministry of Labour and Productivity requesting explanations for why the report was not submitted on time.
The Federal Government recently failed to pay ASUU members’ November 2022 check-off dues, despite the fact that they had received their pro-rata salaries for the month.
In the midst of the controversy, the labour ministry confirmed that the Federal Government decided not to pay the check-off dues because the association did not provide the ministry with its audit report.
On the contrary, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) claimed that ASUU attempted to submit the report to the ministry, but it was not received.
In response, the labour ministry’s spokesperson, Olajide Oshundun, confirmed to Punch that the ministry did not receive the ASUU audit report because the union failed to explain why it had not submitted it for four years.
He said;
Yes, it is true the audited report was not received from them and that was because they didn’t respond to the ministry’s initial letter, asking them to state the reason they refused to submit the audited report for four years.
The ministry’s letter is explicit on this; they refused to submit their report as and when due and we asked for explanations. The next thing they did was to quickly submit the report instead of replying to us in written form.
And let it be clear that it was when the ministry wrote and threatened that their certificate of registration might be withdrawn that they rushed to submit it.
What they were expected to have done was to respond to the letter first and plead with the ministry for late submission of the documents. Because if the ministry should take it from them just like that, other trade unions may follow suit and just do things at their own will. Meanwhile, there is a law guiding all of these processes.
The ministry didn’t request again the documents but only wrote to get explanations for their failure to do the needful. I can also tell you the matter is already in court, so any further inquiry is sub judice.
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