Federal government has been given a 21-day ultimatum by the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) to address pending issues or risk industrial action.
The union listed the pending issues to include the refusal to effect third party-deductions in most colleges of educations (COEs); ‘double standard’ deployed by the ministries of labour and education against the COEs relative to other tertiary institutions and imposition of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
The president of COEASU, Nuhu Ogirima, in a statement on Wednesday, said the government had failed to address the plight of the colleges “one year after it sent a memo detailing the deplorable state of the institutions”.
The union also said most state governments have equally copied the federal government in the poor handling the affairs of the COEs.
He said “Consequently, administrative impunity and rights deprivation reign supreme in most of these COEs. The Expanded National Executive Council (ENEC) at its meeting of 8th July, is, therefore, forced to challenge the government to shut the teacher education industry since the quality of infrastructure, welfare and service delivery takes no preference in the scheme of governance at all levels”.
According to him, “the ENEC wishes that you take notice hereby that should the government refuse to redress all the issues in contention within 21 days, the union would have no other option than to declare a nationwide industrial action.
“In August 2019, the association transmitted a memo politely requesting President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene in addressing the plight of the public COEs system,” he said.
The memo, published as an open letter to the Presidency, was said to have been also copied to both Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, and his Labour and Employment counterpart, Dr. Chris Ngige.
He said the memo was predicated on “decades of utter neglect of the COE system, which the federal ministry of education could not successfully address”.
“In response to our follow-up correspondences, both FME and FML &E had indicated that they were awaiting the President’s response. Sadly, we all are still awaiting the response, almost one year after the memo was received at the Presidency, the system further degenerates,” COEASU added.
Ogirima said that incidentally, the trust COEASU had on government was misplaced as none of the pledges, including “even the paltry fraction of N15 billion only as a palliative, out of N486 billion required as at 2017, to cushion the effects of the non-implementation of NEEDS Assessment, and others have not been fulfilled till date.”
