The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says its members have been on the same salary structure since 2009.
Biodun Ogunyemi, ASUU president, who spoke at a meeting with stakeholders in Ilorin, Kwara state capital, accused the federal government of neglecting lecturers in public varsities.
“ASUU members’ salaries have remained in the same salary structure since 2009 till date. That has been the fate of Nigerian university lecturers because of the impossibility of this renegotiation of the agreement reached in 2009,” he said.
At the meeting, which focused on the ongoing ASUU strike, Ogunyemi also accused the federal government of conspiring with private varsities to deliberately underfund and de-market public universities in the country.
He claimed that such conspiracy was evidenced in the surge of private universities across the country.
The ASUU president noted that the federal government has consistently failed to honour its 2009 agreement with the union, adding that such has left public universities in a pitiable state.
“Way by 2009, after much pressure ASUU signed an agreement with the Federal Government. That agreement was supposed to be renegotiated by 2012, 2015, 2018 and after that 2021, which means by now we should be talking about fourth or fifth negotiations; but as at today, we have not been able to renegotiate it once,” he added.
“There are four major areas in that agreement that we have been talking about. They include funding, condition of service, university autonomy and academic service and other matters.
“In the last ten years budgetary allocation to education has not gone beyond 10 percent, which means even that agreement that we should have been reviewing today has not only been set aside, it has been totally ignored.”
ASUU had in March embarked on an indefinite strike over federal government’s failure to meet its demands.
Copyright 2024 TheCable. All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from TheCable.
Follow us on twitter @Thecablestyle