The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) has urged the Federal Government to pay outstanding entitlements to public service employees, just as it frowned at the forceful dispersal of workers who converged at the Federal Ministry of Finance on September 15, 2025, to drive home their demands for payment of outstanding entitlements.
Joshua Apebo, ASCSN secretary-general, in a statement seen by BusinessDay on Thursday, stated that for the past ten years, the union has continued to present several memoranda to the Federal Government to pay public service employees their outstanding entitlements.
“These entitlements include but are not limited to: salary, promotion and elongation arrears, 1st 28th days in lieu of hotel accommodation, duty tour allowance (DTA), payment of allowance to Education Officers who were dislocated from Unity Schools in the North-East, disarticulation of Junior Secondary Schools from the Senior Secondary Schools to create vacancies in the directorate level, regularisation of appointment of PTA teachers, etc, among others, Apebo said.
“Indeed, at various Annual General Meetings of Chairmen of the 110 Federal Unity Schools including Federal Education Quality Assurance Service (FEQAS) in the past five years including the one held in May 2024 in Lagos, resolutions were passed and forwarded to the Federal Ministry of Education and thereafter in January this year 2025, an ultimatum was issued to the Federal Ministry of Education by this union to implement all the demands
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He further added: “Constant invasions of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) by Federal Government employees demanding payment of legitimate accumulated entitlements or protesting unfair Labour practices constitute a great embarrassment to President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda policy, and this should not be allowed to continue.”
The ASCSN stressed the need for the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) to provide immediate financial backing to pay all outstanding entitlements owed to Education Officers and other public servants without further delay.
It also recalled that when President Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime tried to privatise the Unity Schools, the Association went to court, embarked on a 7-week strike, mobilised leaders of thought, royal fathers, religious leaders, sisters, trade unions, parent teacher associations, students unions, civil society groups, and the process was stopped in 2010 when President Goodluck Jonathan restored the Junior Secondary components of the schools that had already been disarticulated in preparation for phasing out the Federal Government Colleges completely.
According to the ASCSN, the union has continued to send memoranda and letters to Council and to the Presidency, emphasising the need to restore payment of gratuity to public service employees, stopped, for inexplicable reasons, in 2004 when the Pension Reforms Act was enacted, even though that Law did not abolish payment of gratuity to public servants.
