Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
An aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, Lauretta Onochie, has accused the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) of blackmailing Nigerian governments.
The Special Assistant to the President for Social Media made the accusation on Twitter on Tuesday.
Onochie urged the National Assembly to pass legislation requiring the union’s leadership to pay striking members’ salaries.
According to the presidential aide, ASUU executives should not be able to live solely on union dues while other members suffer as a result of the strike.
“ASUU has blackmailed every Nigerian government,” she wrote. The National Assembly should pass legislation requiring ASUU to pay strikers’ salaries.
“The current situation, in which ASUU executives live solely on union dues, leaving members out in the cold, is unjust to their members.”
ASUU speaks out about when the strike will end as the union meets with the government. Today
This comes just hours after ASUU President Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke announced the union’s meeting with the Federal Government for today.
The union and the Federal Government are meeting, according to Osodeke, to discuss the union’s demands, which prompted the strike.
The ASUU President stated that the decision of the Federal Government would determine the next step in the union’s strike.
Osodeke told Channels TV on Monday that if the Federal Government agrees to ASUU’s demands at the meeting, the strike will be called off.
According to TrackNews, ASUU has been on strike since February 2022 as a result of the Federal Government’s failure to uphold its end of the bargain struck in 2009.
The government’s refusal to accept the union’s UTAS software for salary payment has also contributed to the lingering strike.
