Lecturers at the Federal University of Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE) embarked on a protest to draw government’s attention to the deplorable state of public universities, arising from poor funding.
The protest carried out by lecturers from all the faculties of the institution under the aegis of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) held on Friday, June 28, 2024.
Briefing journalists after the protest, the FUOYE ASUU chairperson, Fagbuagun Abayomi lamented the deplorable state of affairs in public universities across the country and demanded urgent action by the federal government to address the situation.
Abayomi expressed displeasure that the Federal Government had failed woefully to address numerous challenges facing the university system despite persistent outcry by ASUU and other stakeholders.
He added that the refusal of the government to be alive to its financial responsibility and commitment to public universities was dangerous and would spell doom for the country’s education sector.
He highlighted the outstanding issues including; the renegotiation of the 2009 Federal Government/ ASUU agreement, payment of withheld salaries, promotion arrears, and Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) as well as the degenerating socio-economic crisis, among others:
“We were very hopeful that the Tinubu Administration would address all the issues affecting the Union, going by his campaign promises to end the ASUU strike. But, the government has shown insensitivity and has not responded to the issues at stake.
“Despite our good intentions to make our Universities better, the government has continued to unleash untold hardship on the lecturers and students.
“We are bold to say that if the insensitive stance of the government persists, and our members are pushed to the wall, the Union should not be blamed by Nigerians for avoidable industrial action”, Abayomi said.
While calling on the federal government to urgently remove the ASUU members from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), Abayomi regretted allegedly using the judiciary to activate the no-work-no-pay rule whenever the Union embarked on any strike action.
“It is noteworthy to mention that before ASUU embarks on any industrial action, it ensures that the conditions for embarking on such action are fully fulfilled. Such a travesty of justice, if allowed to continue through executive muscling of the union, will never augur well for the academic sector.
“We call on the government to honestly discontinue the use of IPPIS as a payment platform, which is inconsistent with the University Establishment Act. As a solution, ASUU developed UTAS (University Transparency and Accountability Solution) as a way to alleviate payment problems encountered through IPPIS but the government rejected it after the software was tested with 98.8% performance evaluation.
“We want to state without mincing matters that the budgetary allocation to education had always been meagre over the years. This has created crises in terms of infrastructural development, teaching and research equipment acquisition, acute shortage of staff, students’ accommodation, and water and electricity supply, among others.
“ASUU FUOYE hereby condemns in all ramifications, the sheer insensitivity of the government and demands that the revitalization fund be released without further delay. We additionally demand that budgetary allocation to education be upwardly reviewed to reflect global best practices”, he said.
