No lecturer has been paid since February – ASUU President

The Academic Staff Union of Universities on Tuesday said none of its university lecturers has been paid since the union embarked on industrial action in February.

ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, in an interview on Channels Television accused the Federal Government of using hunger as a tool to force the striking lecturers into returning to their classrooms.

Osodeke insisted that the current administration cannot use the force of hunger to pull the striking union members.

According to him, the Federal Government thinks that depriving the lecturers of their salaries will force the university teachers to collapse and end the strike.

He said, “Our salaries have been held, this is the sixth month or salaries have been held. 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.”

Recall that ASUU on February 14 embarked on strike to press home its demands for a better welfare package, revamping of the nation’s education sector among others, a situation that has forced many Nigerian students to be at home.

Worried by the lingering industrial dispute, 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 will elapse today and ASUU remains adamant until its demands are met.

Not moved by the development, the union extended the strike by another four weeks, thus dashing the hopes of students to return to school.