On Wednesday, July 27, Governor Nasir El-Rufai threatened to dismiss all teachers at Kaduna State University (KASU) who are currently participating in the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike, which started in February.
El-Rufai urged the lecturers to head back to the classrooms in a radio talk on Wednesday in order to prevent their positions from being declared vacant.
He insisted that because ASUU’s issues were with the federal government, not the state government, KASU lecturers had no need to participate in any strike.
El-Rufai further claimed that he had ordered the suspension of the wages of the striking professors.
He said:
“The Acting Vice Chancellor has assured me that they will resume but 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.”
