Bayelsa State governor, Senator Douye Diri, has urged lecturers at the state-owned Niger Delta University (NDU) to end their seven-month-old sympathy strike with the national body of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) because the state government is not owing them.
The governor said the sympathy industrial action by lecturers of the university was no longer justifiable as they had been receiving their salaries without going to work.
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He spoke in Yenagoa during a dinner in honour of the victorious Bayelsa United Football Club.
The governor, in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Daniel Alabrah, on Wednesday noted that lecturers in federal tertiary institutions might have issues with the federal government but that was no longer the case with the state-owned institution lecturers.
He said although the institution’s governing council had scheduled a meeting with the union, the lecturers ought to reciprocate the goodwill of the state government by returning to the classroom in the interest of the students.
He said, “The issues are with the federal universities and not the state institutions. State-owned institutions in our sister states like Rivers and Delta did not join the strike or have called off theirs. I would like the Niger Delta University to follow suit by calling off the strike.
“You all know that you cannot be receiving salaries and you do not go to work for seven months. Like I said, I have set up the machinery and I am very sure that reasoning will prevail. NDU will resume in the shortest possible time for our children to go back to school.”
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