The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Tuesday insisted that the Federal Government has not paid its university lecturers since the union embarked on industrial action in February.
ASUU President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, stated this while speaking during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
Osodeke accused the Government of using hunger as a tool to force the striking lecturers into returning to their classrooms.
Noting that their salaries have been held for the past six months, Osodeke said the present administration cannot use the force of hunger to pull the striking union members.
According to Osodeke, Government thinks that depriving the lecturers of their salaries will force the university teachers to collapse and end 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, ‘please 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,” Osodeke said.
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, instructed the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, to proffer a solution to the challenge and report back to him in two weeks.