Strike: ASUU Gives FG Fresh Condition

In the midst of the continuing strike, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has issued a new demand to the Federal Government.

Insisting that unfinished academic sessions should be disregarded in the absence of the action, ASUU stressed that the Federal Government would be required to pay the professors’ salary backlog.

Despite the fact that public institutions have been closed since February of this year, according to ASUU President Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, professors should still be paid because they are required to teach in order to make up for the lost time.

Following the Federal Government’s persistence on not paying the teachers’ wages due to the industrial action, Osodeke was speaking during an interview on Channels Television’s breakfast program, Sunrise Daily.

He said, “If we agree on that, therefore, the lectures we should’ve given [to students] for 2020/2021 and 2021/22 [sessions], should be allowed to go so we start a new session, 2022/23, in September.

“Therefore, by July next year, I would go on my leave as we used to have in those days so that the backlog is gone. All the lectures that remain; all the two sets of admissions that JAMB has given that are waiting should become irrelevant.”

Osodeke explained that when “other unions go on strike and come back, all those periods for which you are on strike, you don’t need to do the backlog of work.

“But for ASUU, when we go back today, we’re going to start from the 2020/2021 session. For these two sets of students that have been admitted by JAMB, we’ve to teach them over these periods to ensure that we meet up with the system.

“So, we’re going to do the backlog of the work we’ve left behind. We aren’t going to start today and say ‘This session is 2022/23, therefore, all these two sets of people that have been admitted by JAMB are cancelled. We have to take another admission for the 2023/24 session’.”