The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) stated on Tuesday that since the union started taking industrial action in February, the Federal Government had not paid university professors.
Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, the president of ASUU, made this claim in an interview with Channels Television's Sunrise Daily.
Osodeke claimed that the government was using hunger as a weapon to coerce the academics who were on strike to return to their classes.
Osodeke stated that the current administration cannot use hunger to force the union members who are on strike to end their protests because their paychecks have been kept for the previous six months.
Osodeke claims that the government believes that depriving academics of their pay will cause university teachers to give up and abandon the strike.
This is the sixth month that our salaries have been kept, and they have been held. They reasoned that if they withheld our salaries for two or three months, we would beg them to let us return to work.
"But as an intellectual alliance, we have developed beyond that. As the government is doing, you cannot use the force of hunger to drive our members out, Osodeke stated.
According to bendelnews, ASUU went on strike on February 14 to press its demands for a better welfare package and the reformation of the country's educational system, among other things. This has caused many Nigerian students to stay at home.
President Muhammadu Buhari had given the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, instructions to present a solution to the problem and report back to him in two weeks on July 19, concerned about the ongoing labour conflict.