President Bola Tinubu on Monday was admonished by the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) to put in place policies that will yield immediate results for Nigerians experiencing hardship.
Nigerians have complained about some of the policies introduced by the Tinubu-led government which has led to hardship.
The peak of the policies which attracted the attention of Nigerians more was the removal of the petrol subsidy, which tripled the pump price of fuel.
President Tinubu on different occasions has promised that things would get better in the country in the long run.
The General Secretary of NASU, Peter Adeyemi while speaking in Ilorin on Monday however said there is a need to find an immediate solution to the hardship in the land.
He spoke at a press conference during the ongoing 2023 quadrennial delegates conference/election of the universities and inter-university centres trade group council.
Adeyemi said, “This government has good intentions and policies, but these are not what the masses are going to eat.
“Nigerians and our members are dying; we implore President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government to kick start the harmonisation of all his policies that will positively rub off and address the effect of the present hardship occasioned by the removal of fuel subsidy. It is funny that the government will go ahead and remove fuel subsidy without planning an appropriate economic solution.”
According to him, President Tinubu’s celebration of 100 days in office was full of promises amidst the suffering of Nigerians.
Adeyemi stressed that there is a need to put in place appropriate machinery to increase salaries measured by the present cost of living index.
He appealed to the president to clear the outstanding backlog of their four months’ arrears.
Adeyemi added, “The IPPIS payment platform has been extremely problematic with a whole lot of crises and it took us almost two years to be able to resolve a few of them.
“As we speak, we still experience delays in the payment of third parties deduction, half hazard salaries, lack of payment of increment as at when due and some of our allowances initially omitted that we fought for were spread beyond our members that are entitled to it.
“And UTAS which we designed to address the problem has proven to be very reliable and competent in resolving the issue, the government is shying away from adopting it. Yet they have not had the courage to improve on the abnormalities.”
He said the government cannot “force us to strike through its nonchalant attitude to honour MoUs and MoAs and refuse to pay us for the period it lasted.”
