From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai has vehemently vowed to sack all the lecturers of Kaduna State University (KASU) who are currently observing the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
ASUU has been on strike since February over the failure of government to meet their demands.
“The Acting Vice Chancellor has assured me that they will resume and I have asked them to find out if they actually resumed work because I initially instructed that their salary be stopped. But I was later told they didn’t join the strike so I asked that it should be investigated and those that collected salary and joined the strike will be asked to refund the salary.
“This is because Nigeria’s law says ‘no work, no pay’. This is the law. So whoever joined the strike will not be paid salary. We have been telling the KASU Lecturers that they have no problem with State government. ASUU’s problem is with the Federal government, therefore why will our staff who have no problems with us joined the strike?
“If this continues, I will wake up one day to sack them all, I swear to God. We will sack them all and declare their positions vacant on the pages of newspaper. They once did same thing and we gave them warning, now they repeated it. I’m only waiting to receive the report from the commissioner for education. I swear to God, we will sack all those that joined the strike if they refuse to resume work.” El-Rufai said.
Several attempts have been made by the State government to make the lecturers return to the classrooms but to no avail.
This was even as labour unions commenced solidarity protest with ASUU penultimate Monday.
But speaking on a radio programme in Kaduna on Wednesday, El-Rufai asked the lecturers to return to classrooms to avoid having their positions declared vacant.
The governor said KASU lecturers had no reason to join any strike, pointing out that ASUU has problem with the federal government, not the state government.