ASUU to FG: You can’t award N15trn road and claim no money, serves strike notice
Maureen Aguta
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) have served President Bola Tinubu a two-week notice within which to pay the remainder of the outstanding salaries of its members, withheld by the Federal Government, after their eight-month strike action in 2022, for which they are now threatening of another action to force the hands of their employers, or face another regime strike, going by the pronouncements of Osodeke, a guest of Sunrise Daily, a breakfast programme on Channels Television, on Thursday.
President of the union, Emmanuel Osodeke who served the notice said: “Every university in Nigeria today are in the 2023/2024 academic year which means that by September/October, they will be in the 2024/2025 academic year. The implication of this is that all the work for which we were not paid when we were on strike, we have covered them by making sacrifices.”
The ASUU boss, who described the treatment of government which paid them only four months as unfair, said: “It’s not about paying four months out of the seven-and-half months’ withheld salaries. None of our members have gone on leave in the past three to four years; we have not gone on vacation so that we can cover the work that we didn’t do while we were on strike which we have covered. You can check, ask the students. But when you said you are paying four out of seven-and-half, I don’t think you are being fair to us.
“We don’t want to hear that ‘we don’t have money’ because if a government can award contract of ₦15 or ₦13 trillion to construct a road and we are asking for just ₦200 billion for Nigerian universities, all of them. If they (the government) have that money (for road construction), they should have money for us.
“Pay the three-and-half months’ salaries that are still being withheld having completed the work. It’s ‘no work, no pay’, we have done the work, they should pay us if not we will also bring the theory of ‘no pay, no work.’ A lecturer still earns about $300. It was $1500 when we negotiated the agreement in 2009.”