Senior government functionaries, including\u00a0ministers, \u201cuse coded language to beg for money\u201d, \u00a0the\u00a0Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institutes and Associate Institutions (SSAUTHRIAI), said on Wednesday.
\nThe union emphasised that before getting their legitimate demands for arrears of money from the Federal Government, it had become a norm for\u00a0public servants to blackmail\u00a0them\u00a0to\u00a0agree to part with some percentage of their entitlements.
\nThe President of SSAUTHRIAI, Comrade Benjamin Akintola, stated this\u00a0during the\u00a0sectoral council meeting\u00a0held\u00a0in Jos, Plateau State\u00a0capital.
\nHe said, \u201cThese public servants have an attitude, it is only now I am understanding them better. They were asking us for money, but they were not coming direct that out of this money, we will part with some amount. If they had come direct, we would have understood them. A very senior person\u00a0in\u00a0the Presidency\u00a0once asked when we would be coming to greet him in his village. It is only now that I am beginning to see that statement as a coded statement and language.
\n\u201cSo what the man was asking us was when we\u00a0would\u00a0be coming to discuss the needful so that we can get the money. He will be expecting us to come. But we didn\u2019t understand that language, it is quite unfortunate about the kind of leadership we have in this country. In fact, I am bleeding within me.
\n\u201cWe once had a meeting with a minister and after our discussion with him, the minister called us to the inner room and he was telling us his preparation to join the governorship race and how one of us gave him about 1,000 T-shirts and another donated him a brand new bus.
\n\u201cThe minister started branding the memo written to the President concerning our N8.2 billion arrears of 53.3 per cent. He said he would make sure that the money is paid before he leaves office. So when we left him, I asked my colleague what the man meant by the coded language and he told me frankly that the man was asking us of money and we should come to the inauguration of his campaign.\u201d
\nAccording\u00a0to him, the\u00a0way and manner the government had been treating the research institute sector in terms of finance and general attitudes has been very discouraging, especially the attitudes of government functionaries in discussing\u00a0their issues.
\nAkintola said, \u201cWe have started discussing our demands with government for long.\u00a0The\u00a0government\u00a0set up a high-powered committee at\u00a0a\u00a0high\u00a0level\u00a0in the Presidency. If you look at the\u00a0way and manner the meetings were conducted, it is now that I sat down and began to look at all those meetings that we had with government.
\n\u201cEach time that they invite us to a meeting, it is either the Director that is supposed to bring the report has been transferred to another place or there would be another excuse. I think it is their strategy, it is now I am beginning to see that they were so deliberate in their actions.
\n\u201cThey will tell you that a Director that is saddled with a function and should give a report, has been transferred.\u00a0So you will now be meeting a\u00a0new fellow who doesn\u2019t know what he is supposed to do and will say he needs time to study the documents.\u201d
\nSSAUTHRIAI\u00a0promised to change\u00a0its strategy\u00a0in the pursuits\u00a0of its legitimate demands since \u201cwe are dealing with a government that is insensitive to our plight.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat\u00a0do we do? We are all gathered here, went on strike for four months and they did not even address the issues. It is a serious matter, now that we are here in Jos, we have to evolve a new strategy to deal with these issues\u201d,\u00a0Akintola\u00a0stressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senior government functionaries, including\u00a0ministers, \u201cuse coded language to beg for money\u201d, \u00a0the\u00a0Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institutes and Associate Institutions (SSAUTHRIAI), said on Wednesday. The union emphasised that before getting their legitimate demands for arrears of money from the Federal Government, it had become a norm for\u00a0public servants to blackmail\u00a0them\u00a0to\u00a0agree to part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}