Congress of University Academics (CONUA), has disclosed its plans to sue the Federal Government to court over their failure to pay members of the congress their eight months salaries.
This was disclosed in a terse statement signed and issued by the National Coordinator, of CONUA, Dr Niyi Sunmonu, the National Secretary, Dr Henri Oripeloye and the National Publicity Secretary, Dr Ernest Nwoke.
The union expressed its grievances towards the government for refusing to pay its members, despite not being a part of the 8 months strike that was embarked upon by Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), from 14 February to 14 October.
The statement read: “CONUA formally made its non-involvement in the strike known to the Federal Government in a letter addressed to the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, in April 2022.
“In the letter, we made it clear that because CONUA constituted a separate and independent union in the university system, our members did not call for any strike.
This was followed by a Press Conference in Abuja on August 19, 2022 at which it was categorically stated that CONUA was not part of any ongoing strike, and that the “No Work No Pay” principle ought not to apply to members of the union.
“CONUA’s expectation is that, due to the express and categorical declaration, the government would seamlessly release our members’ outstanding salaries when it resumed the payment of salaries to all university staff in October 2022. But to our dismay, CONUA members were also paid pro-rata salaries in complete disregard to the fact that we were indeed shut out of duties by the strike.
Subsequently, we wrote to the Accountant-General of the Federatıon and the Ministry of Labour and Employment reminding them that it was an error to lump our members with those that declared and embarked on strike action. It was yet another shock for the outstanding backlog of salaries not to have been paid to our members along with the November 2022 salary.”
