From Laide Raheem, Abeokuta
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has accused the Federal Government of a deliberate attempt at impoverishing university lecturers by its blunt refusal at implementing the Memorandum of Action (MoA) signed with the union.
The union equally decried the poor remuneration of its members, lamenting that the FG has turned varsity lecturers into farmers and taxi drivers.
The Zonal Coordinator of the Lagos Zone of the union, Adelaja Odukoya, gave this submission while addressing journalists at the end of the zonal meeting of the union held at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Delivering his speech, titled: “Our pay cannot take us home: End poverty-wage now”, Odukoya lamented that Nigerian lecturers are the least paid in the world, describing their salary as a “disgraced which shows the premium which the Nigerian government placed on education in the country”.
“It will shock you to know that for most of us outside Lagos, we engage in farming to survive, while some of us in Lagos engage in kabukabu (tax driving) and other menial jobs because our salary can no longer take us home”, the ASUU zonal coordinator stated.
He noted that the last time the salary of lecturers was increased was in 2009, emphasising that the Federal Government is ‘weaponising’ poverty against lecturers.
Odukoya declared that the union is not going back on its planned strike action following the government’s failure to meet its demands.
The strike, he said, had become imperative ‘given the government’s determination to surrender the Nigerian university system to the rapacious plundering onslaught and permutations of both short-sighted Nigerian officials and foreign agents of neoliberalism.’
He further accused the Federal Government of paying lip service to education by poorly funding the sector, poor pay to lecturers, and inadequate infrastructure in tertiary institutions, among others.
He berated members of the National Assembly for enjoying “jumbo” pay at the detriment of lecturers’ welfare, saying: ‘We have always insisted that the cost of governance in this country is too high and nobody is doing anything about it and to increase the salary of lecturers is now a problem for the government.
‘This is happening against the background of the public admission by the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan only that a senator earns N1.5 million while a member of the House of Representatives earns N1.3 million per month.
‘Regrettably, with nine days to the one-year anniversary of the suspension of our last strike and signing of the 2020 MoA (Memorandum of Actions), the government has adamantly and most shamefully refused, failed and neglected to do what was freely agreed to between us.
‘It is clear that the Federal Government by its lamentable actions and condemnable inactions is adding fuel to an already combustible situation,’ Odukoya submitted.