After an eight-month strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Senator Shehu Sani criticised the Federal Government’s decision to pay lecturers only half of what they were paid.
Senator Sani, who served as Kaduna Central’s representative in the National Assembly from 2015 to 2019, claims that no member receives a pay cut for being absent from the “office” during sessions.
He specifically referred to Femi Gbajabiamila, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and his efforts to defend the government’s choice to pay lecturers half wage.
Gbajabiamila
In the dispute between the union and the Federal Government, the Speaker had been serving as a mediator.
The Executive position that it is not required to pay lecturers’ salaries for the time spent on strike is based on the law and the government’s legitimate interest in preventing moral hazard and deterring disruptive industrial actions, the Speaker of the House said in a statement outlining the situation.
“However, efforts have been undertaken to investigate the viability of partial payments to the lecturers
We anticipate that President Muhammadu Buhari, who has expressed a desire to do what is appropriate and necessary to address all pending concerns, will give our request a favourable assessment.
Lawmakers’ full allowances
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Senator Sani, on the other hand, stated on his verified Twitter account: “A system where no legislator gets paid half salary for absence from the chamber during session, even for no good reason, the Speaker is justifying half salary for the university lecturers.”
A few minutes later, he tweeted once more that a lecturer had contacted him, emphasizing that the N40,000 payment was not even close to being half of his salary.
The tweet: “After my last tweet, a university lecturer called me to tell me that he was paid 40k (N40,000) and not ‘half salary’.
“No clerk or gardener in the Presidential Villa or National Assembly is being paid such a paltry sum.”
Casual lecturers
ASUU has meanwhile referred to the half-salary payments to its members as an aberration that treats the lecturers like casual workers.
ASUU expressed dissatisfaction after leaving its NEC meeting that the government’s response to its act of trust was to pay academics their ‘pro-rata’ salary for 18 days in October, treating them as hourly employees.
However, it decided against starting a new strike and instead chose to hold off until Speaker Gbajabiamila intervened in the argument.
