The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said that none of its members has been paid since the union embarked on industrial action in February 2022.
ASUU President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, who disclosed this on Tuesday while speaking during an interview on Channels Television’s breakfast show, ‘Sunrise Daily’, which was monitored by our correspondent, accused the federal government of using hunger as a tool to force the striking lecturers to return to classrooms.
He noted that their salaries have been held for the past six months, saying the current administration cannot use the force of hunger to pull the striking union members back.
Osodeke said the federal government thinks that depriving the lecturers of their salaries will force the teachers to collapse and end the strike.
“Our salaries have been held, this is the sixth month. They thought that if they hold our salaries for two or three months we will come begging and say ‘pls allow us to go back to work’.
“But we as a union of intellectuals, we have grown beyond that. You can’t use the force of hunger to pull our members back which is exactly what the government is doing,” the ASUU President stated.
Recall that ASUU on February 14, 2022 embarked on a strike to press home its demands for a better welfare package and revamping of the nation’s tertiary education sector, among others, a situation that has forced many Nigerian University students to be at home till date.
However, President Muhammadu Buhari had on July 19 directed the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, to proffer a solution to the challenge and report back to him in two weeks.
The presidential ultimatum elapsed this Tuesday and ASUU remains adamant until its demands are met.
The union extended the strike by another four weeks, thus dashing the hopes of students to return to school.
Reacting to Buhari’s order to end the strike, Professor Osodeke insisted that the union was still open to negotiations with government’s representatives to end the industrial dispute.
He, however, maintained that there is no room for a master-slave relationship in the academic world, saying workers have every right to criticise a wrong policy.
