A senior lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Lagos, Prof. Tunde Adeoye, has urged the Federal Government to urgently review the salaries of university lecturers to prevent another nationwide strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Adeoye made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Ota while reacting to the nationwide protests staged by ASUU across the country.
He emphasised that the federal government must be more sensitive to the plight of lecturers and renegotiate the 2009 agreement, which, according to him, has as its core demand the improvement of academics’ salary structure.
“The ASUU members equally have families and aged parents to cater for. As it is now, many of our members cannot pay their house rents. Many of our members who were sick have died, while some with hypertension cannot even afford to buy their routine drugs,” he said.
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Adeoye lamented that most lecturers are overburdened with responsibilities due to the federal government’s embargo on employment across universities, often performing the work of four persons while teaching on “empty stomachs.”
He disclosed that the take-home pay of a professor in Nigeria averages N500,000 before deductions and about N300,000 after deductions, which he described as grossly inadequate given current economic realities.
The don further noted that lecturers in countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe earn better remuneration than their Nigerian counterparts. He, therefore, called on the federal government to improve the welfare of academics and enhance their conditions of service to discourage brain drain.