According to the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), since the union’s prolonged strike action began in February, none of its university lecturers have received anything.
On Channels TV this morning, August 2, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, the president of the academic union, revealed this. He charged that the Federal Government was using hunger as a weapon to coerce the professors who were on strike to return to their classes.
He claims that the Federal Government believes that depriving university professors of their wages will cause them to give up and abandon the strike.
“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.”
ASUU began a strike on February 14 in order to emphasize its demands for a better welfare package and the reformation of the country’s educational system, among other things. This has caused many Nigerian students to stay at home.
