Academic activities at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi have been put on hold following the five-day national warning strike embarked upon by the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU).
The two unions under the aegis of the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of ATBU said that they are withdrawing their services following the directives by their national leadership in order to press home their demands from the federal government.
Speaking with newsmen shortly after rising from its meeting at the union’s office at the ATBU, Yelwa Campus, the JAC chairman, Comrade Austin Jadi, said that it was unfair for the federal government to be selective in addressing the problems in the university system.
He said the unions were not going on strike because they wanted to but they were on it for serious and genuine issues. He expressed optimism that after the five days, there will be no strike in the university system again.
“As you can see, ATBU is already on strike and we are respecting the national leadership and we will do exactly what they have directed,” he said.
He berated the federal government for failing to honour the 2009 agreements and a court order, pointing out that “if the government is responsible, we would be expecting that they respect court orders, they should respect the opinions of the general population.”
He said the federal government’s refusal to obey the court order was another form of corruption being perpetrated by the same government that claimed to be fighting corruption.
“As a responsible government, corruption is not only fought when we are talking about the issues of finances alone, if you have moral corruption, you have other societal corruption and social corruption, these ones are even more dangerous than financial corruption.”
Jadi who said that the frequent strikes in the university system have caused them pain and grief claimed that many of them had died without the staff schools being reinstated, so felt that the issues should be looked into.
The chairman stressed that the frequent strikes in the universities had contributed in displacing many students ad some even lost their lives at the time of rushing back home
