This is certainly not the best of times for some teachers at Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo State as they are presently being owed 17 months’ salary arrears.
Rising from a congress meeting on Monday, 5th June, the university’s branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) denounced the deliberate denial of salaries to some staff since the inception of the university’s Special Intervention Team (SIT).
A joint statement after the meeting by Dr. Cyril Onogbosele and Dr. Williams Odion, chairperson and assistant secretary respectively of the local chapter of ASUU, blamed SIT for the deliberate denial of their legitimate salaries since January 2022, under the guise of re-positioning the school.
Onogbosele and Odion accused the SIT, which was set up by Governor Godwin Obaseki last year to manage the affairs of the school following the dissolution of the Governing Council, of gloating over the suffering, victimisation, repression and oppression of the affected staff.
Fuming, the unionists described the selective payment of salaries by the authorities, which they insisted was without just cause, as “heartless, callous and inconceivable cruelty against humanity.”
Continuing, they accused the authorities of not showing concern about the career progression of staff of the university as clearly demonstrated in the lack of interest in their appraisal and promotion since SIT was inaugurated.
The lecturers expressed disenchantment over the pay cut that has become the hallmark of salary payment to some staff in the state-owned tertiary institution, maintaining that SIT’s regime of pay-cut has crumbled the national statutory salary structure of staff in the school.
The chairman and the secretary lamented that there was never a disciplinary process against the staff being denied salaries and no explanation had been offered ever since for the stoppage of their salaries from January 2022 till date.
Onogbosele and Odion pleaded: “Congress implored the Visitor to the University/Governor of Edo State to urgently prevail on the university authorities to resolve the salary crisis in the university without further delay.”
They reaffirmed their criticism of the interim report presented by the SIT to the state government in May, stressing that it was designed by SIT to blackmail academic staff over some of the problems bedeviling the university to give the government and the general public the impression that the SIT was doing well in ‘repositioning’ the Institution.
