The management of the University of Ibadan has suspended its planned Matriculation ceremonies for the 2015/2016 academic session earlier scheduled for Thursday.
The postponement was due to protest staged by Non-academic staff unions over non-remittance of deductions and unpaid agreed allowance.
The unions had Wednesday morning mobilized members and shut entrance gates into the university.
Reacting, Vice Chancellor University of Ibadan, Professor Idowu Olayinka said that the university management has been transparent by announcing to all unions that the university is having a shortfall in its personnel cost since December 2015 making payment of some allowances difficult.
Olayinka informed that while the total personnel cost of the university is about N932million monthly, the University received N663million in December, 2015 from federal government, and N782 million in January and February 2016 respectively.
While stating that it was regrettable to find the university at the present condition, Olayinka appealed to federal government to assist the premier university in meeting her needs in order to be focused on research, capacity building and development.
The VC said that the allowances being clamoured for by the unions amounted to about N76 million naira monthly which is outside the allocations to the university and unrealistic in view of the present financial strain facing the institution.
While regretting that some students while trying to run away from the orientation venue got injured, Olayinka said it was better to have students over 3,500 safe and sound than going ahead with the matriculation and risking their lives.
A major victim of the protest was the orientation programme for the new student holding at the International Conference centre of the University which was disrupted as the unions stormed the venue and switch off the power supply to the hall.
While the union members moved into the hall, students who were already seated were chased out of the hall with chairs turned upside down.
The unions were protesting non-remittance of deductions from salaries, and lack of democratic ethos from the University Management.
The SSANU Chairman, Wale Akinremi had criticized the administrative style of the management saying it was not democratic enough asking it to be alive to the welfare of staff and remit deductions.
Although the members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) were not part of the protest, it’s members had to park their vehicles outside the campus and forced to trek to their offices.
The university of Ibadan had reportedly received shortfall from federal allocations leading to problems with meeting domestic welfare issues of staff.
To date, our man gathered that the shortfall of the university since November 2015 is now close to N1 billion.
As at the time of filing this report, the Vice Chancellor, Principal officers were in a meeting with security agencies on the situation.
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