The Chairperson of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo State chapter, Dr. Cyril Onogbosele, has disclosed that no fewer than 25 members of academic staff of AAU have lost their lives since he came on board on August 3, 2021, over the crisis in the university, caused by aberrations, impunities, oddities and misnomers.
He declared that the prevailing development in the Edo State government-owned university was strange, baffling and alien, in contrast to how best to administer and manage a modern and contemporary university.
ASUU chairperson of AAU noted that within the period of focus, the state university witnessed the eclipse of the universally-cherished university autonomy, administrative misnomer, highhandedness, pauperisation and victimisation of staff, erosion of pristine university ethos of due process, rule of law and academic freedom – all in the name of repositioning.
Onogbosele, who was accompanied by some members of his executive, and the Benin Zonal Coordinator of ASUU, Prof. Monday Igbafen, who is a former chairman of the union at AAU, in a seven-page text during a news conference at the University of Benin (UNIBEN), urged the Visitor to AAU, Governor Godwin Obaseki, to quickly do the needful, to ensure peace.
ASUU chairperson of AAU, in his text, titled “Systemic Decimation of AAU, Ekpoma,” maintained that the university had been experiencing the worst form of maladministration, as evident in the absence of a governing council and substantive principal officers since 2021.
He said: “Ours is a university that is presently facing the darkest period of zero funding, staff victimisation, intimidation, imposition, and dispensation of hardship on staff.
, as evident in selective payment of salaries, outright denial of salaries to many staff up to twenty six months, deliberate non-remittance of deductions from staff salaries in favour of staff unions, and welfare/cooperative societies, delay in staff appraisal and promotion, bias in, and politicisation of staff disciplinary matters, and anti-workers policies in the university.
“To sustain the vices against the university and its workers, the Edo State government, in concert with its Special Intervention Team (SIT) in the university, has unleashed different forms of blackmail, propaganda and misinformation on the university.
“Currently, contrary to the so-called ‘repositioning agenda’ in the university, which the Godwin Obaseki-led administration kick-started since 2021, AAU is in comatose, with the consequences of workers facing hardship and leaving in droves, while the number of prospective students to the university/enrolment through the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has dropped from more than fourteen thousand in the previous years to barely three thousand in 2024.”
Onogbosele also accused the “de facto” SIT Chairman, Mr. Austin Osakue, of desperation, particularly beguiling Obaseki and members of the public, in order to remain in the university and continue to foist arbitrary administration on AAU.
He said: “AAU, Ekpoma is presently bleeding, and at its lowest and darkest period in its historical trajectory, as a result of a continuing systemic decimation of the university by the actions and inactions of Edo State government, in concert with its SIT in the university.
“The SIT has become the albatross of AAU, Ekpoma, and the Obaseki-led administration in Edo State has deliberately made it so. AAU, Ekpoma is the only known public university in Nigeria that is been managed since May 2021 by a body called SIT, in total deviation from the universally-accepted norms, laws and best global practice.
“On March 16, 2023, at a stakeholders’ meeting on how to resolve the crisis rocking AAU, Governor Obaseki publicly gave ninety days ultimatum to the SIT to wind up its activities, to pave way for the constitution of a governing council, after serious public outcry against the activities of SIT in the university. Till date, the governor’s pronouncement has been observed in total breach, as SIT continues its reign of impunities in AAU.
“Some members of the SIT are by educational qualification not qualified to teach in a university, let alone administer a university. The highest academic qualification of one of them, Mr. Austin Osakue, is NCE.
“As a union, we have consistently condemned the charade called SIT and all it represents. 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 union leaders and many other staff of the university, through deliberate denial of salaries and promotion, pay-cut, witch-hunt and intimidation.
“Other unfriendly/pernicious workers’ policies include the fraudulent implementation of Edo Health Insurance Scheme (EDOHIS), Contributory Pension Scheme (CPC) and payment of access fees to enter our place of work in the university.
“For no just cause, many academic staff have been denied payment of salaries for twenty six months, since January 2022. The affected staff in the university have been working in pains without pay. They were not tried for, or found wanting in violation of the university’s law or rules and regulations to warrant denial of their salaries. Slave trade was abolished hundreds of years ago, but the SIT and AAU’s administration have re-packaged slavery and foisted it on workers of the university. It is slavery to make a human being work without pay.”
AAU’s chairperson of ASUU also declared that enough was enough of the inhuman situation in the university, which he said members of the union would no longer tolerate.
He reiterated that the universal practice for government-owned universities was that the government would set aside funds for the running of the higher institutions, with funds disbursed periodically to the government-owned universities, but Obaseki decided to abolish the release of subvention to AAU, after the initial drastic reduction of the university’s monthly subvention from N270 million to N41.3 million.
Onogbosele pointed out that since the inception of Obaseki’s policy of self-funding in AAU, Ekpoma, the university had been in serious financial crisis, while declaring that the continuing assault on the autonomy of AAU by Edo state government/SIT was of grave concern to ASUU.
He said AAU was being run on directives from Government House, Benin, through the SIT, resulting in the university’s statutory organs, including the Senate, functionally non-existent, as all its functions had either been usurped or taken over by the SIT, which had taken over academic matters in the university, to the extent that SIT was now examining courses and fixing scores for continuous assessment in the university, by arbitrarily raising it from 30 to 50 marks, in a desperate bid to compel students to pay fees.
ASUU’s chairperson in AAU stated that the SIT had completely taken over the administration of the university, while declaring that with SIT, the AAU’s Acting Vice Chancellor, Prof. Sonnie Adagbonyin, was not better than a secondary school prefect, while operating at the mercy of the SIT, to the extent that he could not give order for the electricity generator in the university’s administrative complex to be switched on.
Osakue and the Spokesman of AAU, Otunba Mike Aladenika, were contacted for their reactions, but they declined to respond.
