The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, Ambrose Alli University, AAU, Ekpoma chapter, on Thursday said it has since 2022 lost no fewer than 25 members due to economic hardship occasioned by the alleged non-payment of monthly salaries for the past 26 months.
DAILY POST reports that Cyril Oziegbe Onogbosele, chairman of the union, also added that the non-academic staff recorded several deaths due to the same factors.
“This present executive came on board on August 3, 2021, and since that period to date, we have lost not less than 25 members for my record.
“We are talking about academic staff and not non-academic staff. Non-academic staff also lost members, but I am not going to speak for them.
“The Special Intervention Team/Government’s repeated announcement that it does not owe staff of the university any salary is not true. It is a ploy to distract the public from the sordid reality of pains, hardship, and poverty facing the staff.
“The development has led to the deaths of many workers of the university, including professors, for lack of money to cater for themselves as a result of non-payment of salaries,” he said.
Onogbosele, who lamented the harrowing economic hardship the staff of the university are currently passing through at a press conference in Benin City, noted that failure to address the challenges was an invitation to industrial crisis, restiveness, and an unwholesome university environment.
He said the university has been experiencing the worst form of maladministration, as evident in the absence of a governing council and substantive principal officers since 2021.
According to him, ours is a university that is presently facing the darkest period of zero funding, staff victimization, intimidation, imposition, and dispensation of hardship on staff as evident in selective payment of salaries, outright denial of salaries to many staff for up to 26 months since January 2022.
“Deliberate non-remittance of deductions from staff salaries in favor of staff unions and welfare/cooperative societies, delay in staff appraisal and promotion, bias in, and politicization of staff disciplinary matters, and anti-workers politics in the university.
“In order to cow staff unions and the entire university into complete submission to its whims and caprices, the SIT resorted to the use of hunger as a weapon against leaders and many other staff of the university through deliberate denial of salaries and promotion, pay-cut, witch-hunt, and intimidation,” he added.
The ASUU chairman, who denounced the absence of a governing council and substantive principal officers for the university since 2021, noted that the running of the institution by a Special Intervention Team, SIT, was a deviation from the universally accepted norms, laws, and best global practice.
He opined that the alleged economic hardship and inhuman policies are having negative impacts on the university, the productivity of staff who are leaving in droves, as well as the number of enrollments of prospective students through the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, UTME, which had dropped from 14,000 in the previous years to barely 3000 in 2024.
Onogbosele, while explaining that the tenure of SIT has expired in line with the law that established it in 2021, he, however, urged the state government to as a matter of urgency constitute a governing council for the university, which he said was the globally accepted norm.
He also listed other alleged anti-workers policies by the school management, includinge the fraudulent implementation of Edo Health Insurance Scheme, EDOHIS, Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS, and payment of access fees to enter an individual place of work in the university.
The AAU-ASUU chairman, who decried the poor funding of the institution, noted that the serious financial crisis facing the school was a result of the reduction of the state government’s subvention to the school from the N270 million before Governor Obaseki-led government to the paltry sum of N41.3 million.
As of press time, efforts to reach the university authority proved abortive as the Vice-Chancellor and other principal officers of the university were in an important meeting.
A staff in the Vice-Chancellor’s office, who responded, said he believed that the school authority will respond to the issues appropriately.
Several calls to Mr. Austin Osakue, a member of the SIT who has been accused of taking over the affairs of the team, were not picked nor returned.
We lost over 25 members to non-payment of 26 months salaries, anti-workers policies – AAU-ASUU