Sorry, but...
I understand that the primary concern must be, "Hey! Where is my pay?" but an obvious secondary one must then be, "So, why haven't these guys been paid on time?" That is where this stuff about the ins and outs of buying shiny new Airbuses when wages haven't been paid comes from; it isn't totally unrelated although it is secondary.
Arik seemed dubious right from its beginnings, since it seemed to have been set up using stolen government money, a sort of follow-on to some of the funny business that had been going on there in Rivers State. We used to look at that Embraer flying around (doing what, exactly?) on behalf of one of the less well-managed Nigerian states, wondering what in the world was going on there.
When Arik started many were jubilant, this sort of "You see now! Ah-ah! We ah building a wahld-class ailine heah fo' Naijariah!" This is stuff that you really would expect to hear from your tea-boy, not from serious professionals. Never mind, off they went with totally uncritical press releases about this mass order of new Boeings, service to all four corners of the know universe and all the rest of the usual palaver with just a few grumpy old souls trying to tell everyone it was a scam.
Now we have got to the point where there is a chorus of moans about unpaid wages, when that must be just about the most basic thing that any serious employer has to take care of and never mind service to New York with Boeing 787s or whatever.
So to you guys going unpaid, of course that is the main thing and I cannot argue with that at all. That said, though, I think it is worth bringing up what may possibly have led to you going unpaid, a contention that Arik simply is not a serious attempt at having a properly-run major airline but just another scam perpetrated by known, obvious scammers.
Do not take my word for this, simply guessing at most of the truth as I am. Google "Arik" to read numerous stories about what is going on, not least how the Nigerian fraud squad has been on the case of some of the people behind it, when we can simply say, "Where there is smoke there must be fire."
I would hope that many or most of you have got some valuable experience flying for Arik that will let you go out and get better jobs, ones that at least see you paid for your work, once things take an upturn, as they are sure to do. It isn't that we are trying to divert attention from this primary issue, just that some of us want to look at the background that has led to this sorry pass.