Strike: CSOs vow to mobilise against ASUU over demand for six months salaries

Tamarauemi Ebimini

Two civil societies, the Nigerian Project Initiative (NPI) and the Initiative to Save Democracy (ISD) have threatened to mobilise other civil society groups for a showdown against the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) over its decision to shut lecture halls until its demand for payment of six months salaries while its members were on strike is accepted by the Federal Government.

In a joint statement, they expressed outrage on insistence of the lecturers to keep the students at home over their demand for money that they did not work for.

“ASUU has lost it this time and we dare say that if by this week that ASUU sticks on to its selfish demands, we will be compelled to lay siege to ASUU offices across the country, given that all men of good conscience are against ASUU,” Mohammed Umar Salihu, chairman of NPI and Akinloye James, ISD chairman said in a statement.

However, chairman of the University of Lagos branch of ASUU, Dr.Dele Ashiru, has said the union would not succumb to blackmail over the Federal Government’s threat of no-work-no-pay.

Ashiru let this out during a live interview monitored on Arise TV programme yesterday, with a plea that Nigerians should beg the Federal Government to do the needful. He said the last salary increase for lecturers was in 2009, stressing that if after 14 years such workers were now asking for a pay rise, the demand shouldn’t pose a challenge to the government.