Sacked Adamawa Polytechnic ASUP Officials Takes Case To Assembly

Four lecturers sacked by the Adamawa state polytechnic have petitioned the state assembly to protest their sack, while demanding the lawmakers intervention to re-instate them with their full benefits and entitlement.

The management of the Adamawa state polytechnic, had on 17th February, 2016 issued letters of termination of appointment on Dr. Colman Tizhe Goji, Chairman of the institution's chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Polytechnic,ASUP and three other union officials, over a 2014 labour impasse between the union and the institution's management .

The four sacked unionist in a joint petition seeking the intervention of the state legislators, addressed their complaints of unlawful termination of their appointment to the Chairman house committee on Public Petitions, Ethics and Privileges.

The petition dated 23rd February, 2016 but made available to the press yesterday, urged the assembly, to intervene and direct the polytechnic management and the ministry of higher education, to reinstate them with their full benefits and entitlement.

The assembly had in August 2014 waded into the dispute between ASUP officials and the institution's management, halting plans by the later to sack the officials, over a strike action called by ASUP, demanding better welfare for her members.

But the institution while revisiting the matter, curiously terminated the appointment of labour leaders, based on the report of a disciplinary committee allegedly approved and set up by the Adamawa state commissioner of Higher Education in the state Alh. Ahmed Rufai.

Meanwhile, two of the sacked officials living in the institution's quarters, approached the state rent tribunal following their eviction from their homes in the staff quarters.

Charles Lungu, who approached the Adamawa state rent tribunal said he came home and found out that his wife and children had been, forcefully ejected by some security personnel attached to polytechnic who claimed to be carrying out the school management's directive.

However, the four sacked officials Dr. Colman T. Goji, Mr Kaye Nerius, Mr. Solomon Goro and Mr. Charles Lungu, have decried the termination of their appointment as deliberate acts of victimization.

Since, they noted, the said letter, purportedly terminating their appointment, based the management's action over a labour dispute, involving the union and the management, were the later accused the officials of failure to comply with its directive to end a strike action embarked upon by the union in 2014.

But the sacked officials however denied any wrong doing, in their petition, adding that, the last legislative assembly which intervened in the matter had laid to rest the issues surrounding the strike action in August of 2014.

They therefore queried why the management will still reopen the matter again in 2015, accusing her of unlawfully terminating their appointment and breaching due process in its haste to victimize them.