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The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) said it would not call off its strike until the salary arrears of its members were paid.

The university lecturers also said they would not teach students to make up for the six months they had been on strike if the Federal Government failed to pay for the “period of strike.”

The Union’s National President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, disclosed this to in response to a statement by the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, that the Federal Government would  not concede to ASUU’s demands for the backlog of salaries withheld within the period.

Adamu had told State House correspondents on Thursday that the government would not pay the lecturers for the period of strike.

But reacting to the government’s position, Osodeke said, “He is joking. If they fail to pay, we will not teach those students; we won’t make up for that period. We will start a new session (2022/2023). We won’t conduct examinations; we will start a fresh session totally.

“Lecturers are not doctors that once life is gone, it can’t be brought back. For lecturers, we can still resume where we stopped and still teach them and make up for lost time. But for us, if they fail to pay we won’t make up for the lost time. We won’t go back to fill backlogs; the schools will start a new session, 2022/2023. Examinations and the period lost won’t be taught.”

He added, ‘’If they want to do ‘no work no pay,’ we will also do ‘no pay no work.’ If they won’t pay the backlog, we won’t teach the backlog. We are not like other workers. He doesn’t know what he is saying.”

Explaining why the meeting with the government had been unable to resolve the lingering strike in a statement on Thursday, Osodeke explained that the government’s offer was poor.

He disclosed that the union told the Federal Government through the ministry of education to return to the New Draft Agreement of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Renegotiation Committee whose work spanned a total of five and half years as a demonstration of good faith.

Recall that last Tuesday, ASUU met with the government through the Prof Nimi Briggs committee.

The statement titled, ‘Why ASUU rejects government’s award of salary’, read, “The major reason given by the Federal Government for the miserly offer-paucity of revenue, is not tenable.

“This is because of several reasons, chief of which is poor management  of the economy. This has given rise to leakages in the revenue of governments at all levels. There is wasteful spending, misappropriation  of funds and outright stealing of our collective patrimony.

“ASUU believes that if the leakages in the management  of the country’s resources are stopped, there will be more than enough to meet the nation’s revenue and expenditure  targets without borrowing and plunging the country into a debt crisis as is the case now.”

Osodeke in the statement explained that the government imposed the ongoing strike action on ASUU, saying the FG encouraged it to linger because of its provocative indifference.

The union further said, “The Munzali Jibril-led renegotiation committee submitted  the first Draft Agreement  in May 2021, but the government’s  official response did not come until about one year later! Again, awards presented by the Nimi Briggs-led Team came across in a manner of take-it-or-leave-it on a sheet of paper. No serious country in the world treats their scholars this way.”

It stressed that the government’s      surreptitious move to   set   aside    the   principle of collective bargaining, which was globally in practice, had the potential of damaging lecturers’ psyche and destroying their commitment  to the university  system.

According to ASUU, rejecting a salary package arrived at through collective bargaining is a repudiation of the government’s  pronouncements  on reversing  brain drain.