Tobias Sylvester
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has vowed to continue its ongoing strike until the Federal Government addresses all its demands.
The President, ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, stated this at the University of Port Harcourt on Saturday during an interactive session with critical stakeholders to explain the struggles of the union.
Ogunyemi lamented lecturers were still receiving the same salary scale of 2009 in 2020, vowing if such issues were not addressed, the strike would continue.
“Salary issues are still there; we have not fully addressed that. It appears that some forces in government are bent on making our members to suffer by withholding their salaries. But we believe that once we sort out the issues of the Universities’ Transparency and Accountability Solution, other issues will fall in place.
“The 2009 agreement we had with the government stipulates that that agreement will be reviewed every three years, but since then, we have not been able to review the salary scale.
“That is why we are saying that the negotiation we started with the government in 2017 ought to have been completed and with the completion of that negotiation process, a new salary scale should be in place.
“We are insisting that the process is completed before this ongoing strike is suspended among other things,” Ogunyemi said.
Meanwhile, the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has also threatened to proceed on strike once the nation’s universities open for academic activities.
