Stop punishing lecturers for striking, pay us – ASUU FUTO to FG

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO) have urged the Federal Government to release the seven months’ unpaid salaries of its members.

ASUU urged the government to stop forthwith, the weaponization of hunger to whip Academics into submission and pay their withheld salaries spanning more than seven months.

Strikes all over the world are a legitimate tool to press home workers’ demands.

The Union’s Chairman, Dr Chinedu Ihejirika, pressed home the demand in a communique which he co-signed with its secretary, Dr Etienne Chinakwe and made available to newsmen in Owerri on Thursday, after a protest march by the Union.

Ihejirika voiced the Union’s rejection of what he described as the “casualization of Academics through the pro-rata payment of half salaries to our members in October 2022”.

He argued that while the Union embarked on a strike for seven months, its members deserved their salaries adding that the strike was only a legitimate tool to press home its demands and grievances.

According to him, the fate of any nation lies with her intellectuals, hence the need to preserve the future of great Nigerian children and the nation at large by paying prompt attention to the Union’s demands