Why Govt must pay withheld university teachers’ salaries — Owerri Zone ASUU

By Vincent Ujumadu

Forty-eight hours after members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) staged nationwide protests over their welfare, the Owerri Zone of the union has demanded the immediate payment of the withheld three and a half months’ salaries of its members, insisting that “the labourer deserves his wage.”

The zone comprises Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO), Imo State University (IMSU), Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike (MOUAU), and Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU), Awka.

Speaking at a press briefing in Awka, the coordinator of ASUU Owerri Zone, Professor Dennis Ariwodo, said the 2022 strike action was triggered by government’s failure to honour agreements with the union, and therefore lecturers should not be punished for it.

“You cannot beat a child and ask him not to cry,” Ariwodo said. “Government thought the best way to punish our members was to stop our salaries during the 2022 nationwide strike. But what caused the strike? It was government’s failure to honour several Memoranda of Understanding and Action reached with ASUU. If those agreements had been implemented, would there have been a strike? The answer is no.”

He insisted that government has no moral authority to withhold the salaries, stressing that the value of the money had already depreciated. He also demanded the immediate payment of all arrears of third-party deductions, describing their non-remittance as a criminal offence.

The ASUU leader further urged the release of revitalization funds recommended by the 2012 Needs Assessment Committee, which estimated that Nigerian public universities required about N1.3 trillion over six years for revitalization. He lamented that apart from the N200 billion released in 2014, nothing substantial had been provided to address the decay in the system.

“To tell you how bad it is, no Nigerian public university made the top 1,000 universities in the world ranking, whereas counterparts from some African countries did. Is this not a shame for the so-called giant of Africa?” Ariwodo queried.

He also decried the poor budgetary allocation to education, which hovers around 8%, far below the 15% promised in the APC manifesto and the 26% recommended by UNESCO.

ASUU Owerri Zone, he said, was therefore calling on the government to: Sign the renegotiated 2009 FGN-ASUU agreement, Pay the withheld three and a half months’ salaries, Settle promotion arrears, Remit all outstanding third-party deductions, Release revitalization funds, and Significantly improve budgetary allocation to education.

Ariwodo regretted that despite the union’s patience and repeated efforts to resolve the issues, the government had failed to act.

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