Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
The National Association of Academic Technologists’ (NAAT) three-month nationwide strike has been postponed.
After the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the association on Thursday in Abuja, Ibeji Nwokoma, the organization’s national president, informed reporters of the suspension.
In order to push through its demands, which include not implementing the FGN/NAAT 2009 agreement, NAAT reportedly went on strike on March 21, 2022, according to Track News.
Other demands include, for instance, delaying the payment of members’ unpaid earned academic allowance and delaying the release of the circular that will enable the implementation of CONTISS 14 and 15 for academic technologists.
When the Federal Government granted some of the association’s requirements, according to Nwokoma, the strike was suspended for three weeks.
The group rejected the federal government’s “No Work, No Pay” policy, according to the NAAT President, who also spoke of their heated exchange.
After reaching a deal with the government, he said: “NAAT, as a democratic union, asked all of her branches to have a vote on whether to end or prolong the strike action. The branch test results were discussed by the National Executive Council of NAAT today, August 25, 2022.
“According to the results of the branch ballot, 80.56% of participants preferred to suspend the strike, while 19.44% preferred to keep it up.
After some time, NEC concluded that NAAT’s needs were being met in a major way.
After the aforementioned outcome and calls and appeals from well-meaning Nigerians, students, parents, and other significant stakeholders, the NEC unanimously decided during its session that the current strike action would be suspended for three (3) months to give the government time to address all pertinent issues. The suspension will go into effect at midnight on Friday, August 26, 2022.
As a result, it is required that all NAAT members who work at tertiary institutions resume their jobs on the date mentioned above. Therefore, NAAT requests that students come by so that they might be assisted, especially those who are working on their final year projects and researchers with unfinished practical work and open research projects.
“On the Federal Government of Nigeria’s (FGN) position to invoke the No Work, No Pay rule, NAAT completely reject this in its whole as we are not the designers of the lengthy strike action but rather FGN’s unwillingness to swiftly address all the contending concerns,” the group said. The fact that NAAT followed all prescribed procedures before starting the industrial action should be emphasized.
Therefore, NAAT urgently requests that our withholding compensation be paid as soon as feasible.
It is important to highlight that if all the concerns decided upon with the Honourable Minister of Education on behalf of the government are not fully handled by the end of the three-month window period, NAAT will not hesitate to resume the suspended strike action without prior notice.
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of University and Allied Institutions (NASU) both stopped their strike actions just a few days prior to this event.
