August 22, 2022
Two civil societies, the Nigerian Project Initiative (NPI) and the Initiative to Save Democracy (ISD) have threatened to mobilize 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.
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 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.