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Mohammed Shosanya
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma Chapter, on Thursday disclosed that it has lost over 25 members due to non payment off their salaries since 2021.
Dr. Cyril Oziegbe Onogbosele
Chairperson, ASUU, AAU, Ekpoma, disclosed this on Thursday while briefing newsmen in Benin City on what he tagged “Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma: How not to manage a University – A Call For Rescue.
He said,”Within the period of focus, from that date to present, we have lost no fewer than 25 of our members from our records.This is since 2021. You see, we are in distress,we are in crisis.
“It is even more critical when you are ill and you don’t even have the means, the financial well-withal to take care of your health. In that cases, it has been revealed that there is a connection between non payment of salaries and death.
“We have the information of our members of what they have been passing through that even getting money to buy drugs, they could not get and in the end point, is death.
“So, there is a relationship between non regular payment of salaries and death or the state of health of members. It can even create ill health and when there is an ill health, the end point is death
According to him,for no reason, many academic staff have been denied payment of salaries for 26 months since January 2022.
He said the affected staff in the University have been working in pains without pay, adding that they were not tried, or found wanting in violation of the university’s rules and regulations to warrant denial of their salaries.
He said it is an act of slavery to make a human being work without pay and that even in modern wars, it is criminal to use hunger as a weapon.
He added that the SIT/Government’s repeated announcement that it does not owe staff of the University any salary is not true but a ploy to distract the public from the sordid reality of pains, hardship and poverty facing the staff of the university.
Blaming the SIT for the woes befalling the institution, Onogbosele said the prospective students seeking admission in the university have dropped from 14,000 in the previous years to barely 3000 in 2024.
Onogbosele,who decried the state of the institution further noted that the repositioning of a university does not translate to infringement on workers’ rights, denial of wages and lack of improved welfare for workers.
He added that the constitutional right and freedom of workers to unionize should be respected and protected just as he said that without further delay, there should be restoration of the ideal form of university governance in the University with the immediate constitution of a Governing Council for the institution.
He also said that without further delay, the problem of selective/outright denial of payment of salaries of staff in the University should be resolved with payment of all outstanding salaries to staff of the institution,adding that anything short of this is an open invitation to industrial crisis, restiveness and an unwholesome university environment.
Calling for the immediate restoration of the Governing Council to the University, Onogbosele said the current management model in the University is bizarre and far from the ideal style of institution’s management and administration in the country.
“The current administrative and management structure of SIT in the University is antithetical to university autonomy in terms of procedural self-governance, substantive independence and academic freedom.
“As a result, the University is being run on directives from the State House through the SIT, resulting in the University’s statutory organs, including Senate, functionally non-existent. We condemn a situation where the University’s Senate is no longer useful as all its functions have either been usurped or taken over by the SIT.
“For instance, SIT has taken over academic matters in the University to the extent that SIT now examines courses and fixes scores for continuous assessment (CA) in the University by arbitrarily raising it from 30 to 50 marks in a desperate bid to compel students to pay fees.
“This is a direct breach of the University’s law, Senate rules and NUC guidelines on continuous assessment. All Acting Principal Officers of the University have become nominal officers with SIT.
“The SIT has completely taken over the administration of the University. With SIT, the Acting Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Sonnie Adagbonyin is not better than a secondary school prefect, this is abnormal which much be corrected without further delay” he declared.
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