UNIZIK lecturers block Enugu-Onitsha highway over half pay

Lecturers with the Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK), under the aegis of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), on Thursday, Dec. 1, barricaded the Enugu-Onitsha expressway, in protest against the refusal of the federal government to pay the backlog of salaries accrued during the last industrial action and the payment of half salary for the month of October.

The protest kick-started at the union secretariat down to the university gate by the Enugu-Onitsha highway, where the road was barricaded by the protesters for some minutes. The lecturers carried placards with different inscriptions such as; ”Nigerian professors’ salaries are less than 500 dollars”, ”no to commercialization of Nigerian public Universities”, and stop casualization of Nigerian academics”, among others. 

The UNIZIK chairman of ASUU Comrade Stephen Ufoaroh, who spoke to newsmen shortly after the protest said the demonstration was aimed at reminding the Federal Government to implement the agreement it entered with ASUU after the Union suspended her 2020 industrial action.

Ufoaroh explained that the 2022 8-month strike was only suspended due to the intervention of individuals and the Court of Appeal judgment which has so far not yielded positive results. He further called on the public to appeal to the government to do the needful in order to avert a further crisis in universities.

Also, the institution’s vice-chancellor, Prof. Charles Esimone, in a solidarity message sent to the lecturers decried the deplorable condition they are made to work under in Nigeria’s education system and assured them that the University Management under his leadership, will not take their welfare for granted.