By Bimbola Oyesola
Students in the 110 Unity Colleges across the country may be forced to go home in the next 21 days as workers in the sector have threatened to withdraw their services should Federal Government fail to attend to their plight within the period.
The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), representing the workers, has vowed to order its members to start trade union actions in the schools within the next 21 days, if no meeting is summoned by the Federal Ministry of Education to address welfare issues affecting its members.
Secretary-general of the union, Joshua Apebo, explained that there have been a series of letters since 2023 to the ministry to convene a meeting to address the workers’ plight, without any response.
Giving the ultimatum in a letter sent to the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja on Thursday, January 23, 2025, Apebo regretted that all efforts since 2023 to bring the Federal Ministry of Education to the negotiating table to discuss welfare matters affecting its members in the 110 Unity Schools and the Federal Education Quality Assurance Service (FEQAS) throughout the country have been treated with contempt.
The union warned that no further ultimatum would be given after the expiration of the current 21-day notice.
“Since all efforts to bring the Federal Ministry of Education to the dialogue table had been frustrated and as the national leadership of the association could no longer contain the restiveness of its members in the Unity Colleges and FEQAS, no further notice would be required after the expiration of the 21 days ultimatum issued on Thursday 23rd January, 2025, before trade union actions start in the Unity Schools and FEQAS,” Apebo said.
The union urged all stakeholders to prevail on the Federal Ministry of Education to embrace dialogue now, instead of waiting for the industrial action to start only for them to begin to plead with the union to sheathe its sword.
According to the union, the outstanding welfare issues include payment of promotion, salary and elongation arrears; payment of allowance to education officers displaced from the Unity Schools in the North-East, and payment of first 28 days in lieu of hotel accommodation as stipulated in the Public Service Rules.
Other demands include disarticulation of Junior Secondary Schools from the Senior Secondary Schools to create vacancies in the directorate level, payment of transport allowance and DTA to FEQAS staff, and the need to drastically reduce exorbitant medical fees charged members of staff by the health management organisation (HMO) appointed by the Federal Ministry of Education under the National Health Insurance Scheme.
“There are also issues of regularization of appointment of PTA teachers, implementation of the White Paper, which stipulates that units of the association in the 110 Federal Unity Schools should be members of the School Based Management Committees (SBMCs) so that they could be part of the decision-making processes in the schools, scholarship for children of education officers in colleges where their parents teach, in line with the directive of former President Muhammadu Buhari,” stated the Secretary General.
He added that the union has consistently demanded from the ministry, the resumption of quarterly meetings with the union where “welfare issues affecting members of the association in the headquarters of the ministry, those in the 110 Federal Government Colleges, and those in FEQAS throughout the country can be discussed and resolved in the interest of industrial peace and harmony but all our gestures for dialogue have been rebuffed.”