ASUU Begs For Money To Return To Work

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU says its members have no money to go back to class to start working.

The president of the union, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke revealed this on Sunday, adding that his members have been impoverished because.  they have not received salaries for months.

The lecturers cannot even afford the transport fare to return to work, Osodeke said.

He said unlike in the past when lecturers live on campus, many lecturers, he explained, now live outside the campuses, and would need money to transport them back to work.

The union ended its eight-months-long strike last week after a deal was brokered with the federal government. They are expected to resume today.

The angry lecturers embarked on strike on February 14 after their demands were not met by the Buhari administration, and only agreed to end the strike after the Speaker of the House of Representative, Femi Gbajabiamila intervened.

But the lecturers have not been paid for eight months by the federal government which insisted on no work no pay policy.

But the magazine learned that part of the deal that was reached with the government is that their salary will now be paid.

According to him, “In schools those days, every lecturer lives on campus and you can trek to your office but these days, many lecturers live 20, 30 kilometres to their offices. How will they pay for their transport to work?

“These are the issues we are going to have, that the branches will have to deal with. We expect the government to pay the money [eigth months salary arrears] so that these people will go back to work while we are negotiating on other issues.”

“We are resuming because we are obeying an industrial court judgment because the issues have not been fully resolved, and no agreement signed.

“We are also hoping that with the intervention of the Speaker [of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila], as promised by him, we will resolve this problem within a very short time.

“Our lecturers will teach but you can’t expect someone who is owed eight months’ salary, maybe from his bank, he has collected more than N1m as a loan and you have not paid him one kobo and you want him to go to class and teach.

“I pray they go there because of the children and do the best they can do. You don’t expect a hungry man to go there [school] with an open mind.”

Following the announcement last week that the lecturers will resume work on Monday, the magazine learned that many students have returned to their various campuses across the country hoping that lectures will resume immediately.

But from all indications, full academic work is not expected to start immediately considering that the returning lecturers would need to resolve some of these problems, while the campus environment would also be cleaned up before work can start in earnest.

“Yes, we have resumed based on the agreement reached last week with the federal government. But we also need time to settle down and clean up our tables before full academic work can start,” a lecturer in the University of Lagos, UNILAG said on Monday.