The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has revealed its next line of action should Federal Government fail to pay the six-month salary arrears of its members.
The union said its members would not teach students to make up for the six months they had been on strike should the Federal Government fail to pay for the “period of strike.”
On Thursday, Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, while speaking during the Ministerial Media Briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said that President Muhammadu Buhari rejected the arguments of ASUU and insisted on the “no-work-no-pay” policy.
The minister explained that ASUU members will not be receiving salaries for the period they were on strike.
Reacting to the government’s position, the ASUU President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke said their members will not meet up for the lost time should the government withold their six-month salaries.
He explained that the union will just start a fresh session when the strikes end.
In his words: “He is joking. If they fail to pay, we will not teach those students; we won’t make up for that period. We will start a new session (2022/2023). We won’t conduct examinations; we will start a fresh session totally.
“Lecturers are not doctors that once life is gone, it can’t be brought back. For lecturers, we can still resume where we stopped and still teach them and make up for lost time. But for us, if they fail to pay we won’t make up for the lost time. We won’t go back to fill backlogs; the schools will start a new session, 2022/2023. Examinations and the period lost won’t be taught.
“’If they want to do ‘no work no pay,’ we will also do ‘no pay no work.’ If they won’t pay the backlog, we won’t teach the backlog. We are not like other workers. He doesn’t know what he is saying.”
It would be recalled that ASUU had embarked on a one-month warning strike on February 14 to press home its demand for the implementation of the October 2009 ASUU/FGN agreement.
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Educational Institutions (NASU) and National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) later joined the industrial action.
In May, the ASUU President, Emmanuel Osodeke, announced the extension of the three-month prolonged strike by an additional three months.
