Activities were brought to a complete standstill on Wednesday at the University of Ibadan as non-teaching unions of the institution staged a protest against shortfall in their salaries and unpaid arrears of allowances.
The protesting workers include those under the Non-Academic Staff Union (NAsU), Senior Staff Union of Universities (SSANU) and National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT).
The protesters put the entrance gates under lock and key creating traffic snarl for workers going to resume at the state secretariat.
NASU led by its chairman Segun Arojo and SSANU by Wale Akinremi completely shutdown the university’s internal transport system shut, forcing newly admitted students and lecturers going for exams to trek to their destination.
the university is billed to resume formally next week but postgraduate examinations are still ongoing in some departments.
The unions are protesting non-payment of staff of their staff school, non-payment of arrears and non-remittance of deductions to their cooperative societies and unions since December 2015 by the University authorities.
It was gathered that the University had since November 2015 been receiving a discounted earnings of N301million monthly from the federal government, against the wage bill of N932million per month.
It reportedly received N632m in December and N782m in January with a shortfall of about N500 million which made remittance of deductions to unions and payment of arrears of allowances impossible.
As at the time of filing this report, the union leaders were still addressing their members who were shocked at the protest this morning when the university salary for January was paid on Tuesday.
Director of Communication, olatunji Oladejo, who confirmed the protest described it as unfortunate, stating that the university received shortfall in personal cost from the Federal Government thereby affecting the deductions and cooperative.
He said that the Vice chancellor Prof Idowu Olayinka was concern about the situations and has scheduled an urgent meetings with the unions immediately.
“Recently, the Vice Chancellor embarked on faculty visit where he had mentioned the short fall and the faculties saw reasons with him but the union leadership were not present then” he said.
Speaking to journalists, SSANU Chairman, Barrister Wale Akinremi stated that the protest was not only to protest delayed payment of salaries but to protest the non-democratic nature of the university administration over the situation of things on campus.
Akinremi noted that the university administration had met with unions and agreed to some agreements which in the last few months had not been attended to.
As a representatives of the people, Akinremi said all unions must be carried along in issues affecting their welfare and urged the federal government to increase allocation to the premier university so as not to plunge it into crisis.
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