5th April, 2017
Gbenro Adesina/Ibadan
Less than 24 hours after the non academic staff of the University of Ibadan (UI) suspended its three weeks strike, the Congress of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has resolved to embark on a one-week warning strike starting from today.
At its meeting on Tuesday ASUU said it had received permission from the national body of the Union to declare a one-week warning strike beginning from 12.01am on Wednesday April 5 2017 to 12.00 midnight of Tuesday 11th April, 2017.
According to a strike bulletin released by ASUU, University of Ibadan Chapter, signed by its Chairman, Dr Deji Omole, the one-week warning strike is to compel the university administration to address pending welfare matters affecting members of ASUU.
Some of the these issues include but not limited to; shortfall and fractional payment of salary of members, illegal pension deductions, non-payment of postgraduate supervision allowance, non-payment of promotion arrears, refusal of University to conduct a credible and transparent staff audit, failure to make regularly available University Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, profile and immediate reversal of illicit deductions and others.
The union charged its members not to be involved in teaching, supervision or attending statutory and ad hoc meetings during the strike.
The non academic Staff of the premier institution suspended their three-week old strike on Tuesday.
The development, which was confirmed by the Director, Public Communication of the university, Tunji Oladejo, led to the resumption of activities on the campus.
During the strike, the non academic staff locked all the gates leading to the school between 7am and 4pm thereby forcing the academic staff, who are not living on campus to park their vehicles outside and trek to the school to perform their statutory responsibilities.
The three non academic staff unions; the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT, Non–Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions, NASU, and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, agreed to sheathe their swords after series of negotiations with the university management.
The workers suspended the strike after the university agreed to pay the shortfall of both the non academic and academic staff for the month of January and February, as well as the full payment of the March salary.
Our correspondent reports that though the January and February part payments owed the staff were paid, the university allegedly overpaid the staff and had to issue a statement intimating staff of the error in payment.
According to the statement, the extra payment would be converted to be part of the March salary.
However, to the chagrin of the staff, part payment was made in March as against the promise of the school authority to pay March salary in full.
Some of the staff who spoke on the issue said the school only made the promise to deceive the workers into resuming work.
According to one of them, the main grouse of the staff is the recurrent monthly fractional payment of salaries since December 2014 and the unauthorized pension deduction by the university from staff salaries since 2004.
The source pointed out that pension contributions of the staff were already being deducted from the source before the salary is paid.
He wondered why the university is also deducting about 7.5 percent from workers’ salaries which does not tally with the statement of account sent by individual pension administrators to staff of the university.