The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has threatened to down tools if the Federal Government fails to pay public university lecturers their withheld salaries.
The President of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke disclosed this in an interview on Channels Television on Thursday.
Osodeke said it is unfair for the Federal Government to pay lecturers four months of their 2022 withheld salaries and hold on to salaries of three-and-half months.
According to him, public universities in the country have so far covered the work for the period that they were on strike in 2022 and should be duly paid.
In his words,“It’s not about paying four months out of the seven-and-half months’ withheld salaries.
“Every university in Nigeria today is 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.
“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 a contract of ₦15 or ₦13 trillion naira to construct a road and we are asking for just ₦200bn for Nigerian universities, all of them. If they (the government) have that money (for road construction), they should have money for us,” he added.
The ASUU president said the two-week ultimatum given to the government began on May 13, 2024.
He said ASUU members must be fully paid for the entire period of the industrial action in 2022.
He added that the Tinubu administration has not done lecturers any favours by clearing four of their about eight months’ withheld salaries.
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