ASUU Rejects Wage Award, Insists On Negotiated Salary

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) yesterday insisted on negotiating the salary of its members with the Federal Government as it rejected the N35,000 wage award.

National President Emmanuel Osodeke stated this in Ibadan at the inauguration of the secretariat of the University of Ibadan branch of the union. Osodeke stated that the union agreed that whatever was legally sent to members’ accounts should be spent but not taken as the negotiated salary.

The professor said: “We told them we should negotiate our wage, but they said we are giving you an award of N35,000; we have told them that it is not our own. “We are still insisting that there has to be a negotiated salary.”

He identified the renegotiation of the existing agreement, payment of withheld salaries, earned academic allowance and release of the Needs Assessment Funds as pending issues with the Federal Government. While commending the UI ASUU branch for the edifice it built using the expertise of its members, Osodeke decried the use of external or foreign consultants to handle projects in the country.