Bayelsa State Governor Douye Diri has urged lecturers at the state-owned Niger Delta University (NDU) on Wilberforce Island to end their seven-month-long sympathy strike with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Diri insisted that the sympathy strike by lecturers of the state-owned university was no longer justifiable as the university teachers had been receiving their salaries monthly without going to work.
The governor noted that although the institution’s governing council had scheduled a meeting with the union, the lecturers ought to reciprocate the state government’s goodwill by returning to the classroom in the interest of the students.
A statement yesterday in Yenagoa, the state capital, by his Chief Press Secretary, Daniel Alabrah, quoted the governor as speaking on Tuesday night at a dinner in honour of the victorious Bayelsa United Football Club in Yenagoa.
Diri said his administration had sorted out all the issues between it and the institution’s chapter of the ASUU.
He said: “Let me use this opportunity to call on lecturers at the Niger Delta University to call off their strike. I have already given directives to the Governing Council, which represents the government in the management of that university.
“For about seven months, they have been on strike. They call it a sympathy strike because the very local issues that they raised with our government have already been sorted out. So, they have no problem with the state government.
“About two or three months ago, I met with the (ASUU) leadership at a meeting not to continue the sympathy strike. Yes, they are all unionists. However, in Nigeria, there are two layers of government that are totally different.