The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, have revealed that unpaid salary and financial hardships caused the deaths of 84 of its members between May and August of 2024.
This shocking disclosure was revealed by ASUU President Emmanuel Osodeke on the Sunday episode of Channels Television’s sociopolitical show Inside Sources with Laolu Akande.
“In the past three months, from May to August (2024), Nigerian universities lost 84 academics to death. In three months, because of what our people are going through.
“Despite this crisis, you are holding somebody’s three-and-half or more salaries on the no-work, no-pay, you are owing this money. People are trying to survive, you introduced fuel increase, you introduced electricity increase, and everything is gone now.”
To have the industry operating at its best, Osodeke said that Nigerian universities need to receive more funds. He also stated that lecturers need to be inspired.
Despite working as a professor for fifteen years, he claimed to make N420,000 a month. If Nigerian academics are not paid well, they cannot compete on a global scale, he claims.
To settle several outstanding concerns, such as the completion of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement renegotiation and the release of withheld salary as a result of the 2022 industrial action, ASUU sent the Federal Government a 14-day ultimatum on September 25, 2024.
To push for some of their goals, including an improved welfare package, academic and non-academic unions in Nigeria went on an eight-month strike in 2022.
Following the invocation of a “no work, no pay policy” against the unions by the administration of then-President Muhammadu Buhari, President Bola Tinubu authorised the payment of four of the approximately eight months’ worth of salary that had been withheld in October 2023.
While members of the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) received no pay at all, ASUU members received four months’ worth of the withheld payments. When the two non-academic unions went on strike in early March, Tahir Mamman, the minister of education, declared that the government would think about paying for them halfway.
According to Osodeke, ASUU members must receive their full pay during the 2022 industrial action. He said that by paying back four of the roughly eight months’ worth of salary that had been withheld, the Tinubu government had not done professors any favours.
