EDUCATION COLLEGE LECTURERS BEGIN NATIONWIDE STRIKE TODAY

Members of the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU)
have declared full industrial action nationwide effective from today.
COEASU made this known yesterday in a letter addressed to the
Supervising Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike, a copy of which was
made available to National Mirror.
COEASU's grievances include infrastructural decay in collleges of
education, poor funding, nonimplementation of the 2010 FG-COEASU
agreement, poor conditions of service, brain drain and alleged illegal
imposition of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System
(IPPIS) on its members.
The association stated in a letter signed by its National President,
Asagha Nkoro and Ogirima, that the government directive to National
Commission for Colleges of Education to impose the IPPIS on colleges
without recourse to earlier meetings by concerned parties was
unsuitable.
Part of the letter reads: "While the government held series of talks
with the union leadership between September and December 2013,
evidence abound that government does not wish to keep her side of the
bargain in meeting the understanding reached at such meetings.
"This, without equivocation, is unacceptable to our union given the
peculiar high nuisance and volatile nature of the colleges of
education sector.
"More so, but for the constitution and inauguration of the Needs
Assessment Committee, government merely paid lip services to all other
issues, highlighted in our earlier correspondences".
Other complaints by the associations against the government are:
refusal to fund the Peculiar and Responsibility Allowances as
obtainable in Earned Allowances of the universities; refusal to
implement the migration of lower cadres as obtainable in polytechnics;
and non-accreditation of programmes of the colleges of education among
others.
In compliance with the resolution of its Expanded National Executive
Council Meeting, COEASU said its members had been directed to resume a
full scale strike action suspended earlier this year, "unless and
until government meets the demands.