Activities at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Ekiti State, were paralysed yesterday as workers protested poor conditions of service.
The Vice Chancellor, Prof. Isaac Asuzu, and other senior officials stayed away from work as the protesters barricaded the access road to the campus, singing war songs.
The protesters, comprising academic and non-academic staff, trooped out from 7am, blocking the Ado-Ikole-Omuo-Lokoja Road, which leads to Abuja. They lit bonfires on the road.
Travellers were stranded as vehicles with passengers took alternative routes.
The protesters urged President Goodluck Jonathan and Education Minister Ibrahim Shekarau to probe the finances of the university.
They accused the vice chancellor and bursar of lack of transparency.
They said FUOYE workers earn less than their counterparts in other federal universities.
The placard-carrying protesters claimed that Asuzu denied them of hazard and relocation allowances, regretting that workers with lower qualifications are placed above those with higher degrees.
Some of their placards read: “Pay all our allowances for the community to benefit”;”This is neo-colonialism, enough is enough”; “No to anti-transformation agenda”; “Remit to the government and pay our staff salaries”; “Asuzu must go”; “We are not slaves, Jonathan save us”, among others.
A protester, who pleaded for anonymity, claimed that workers were being treated like slaves while deductions from their salaries were not remitted to the appropriate quarters.
He maintained that the peace of the university could no longer be guaranteed, vowing that the workers had resolved to take their destiny in their hands.
The protesters’ spokesman claimed that outrageous taxes were deducted from their salaries, adding that no worker had been promoted since the university was established about four years ago.
He said: “No to anti-transformational agenda. What is being done in this university runs contrary to the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan, but we are for President Jonathan and that is why we want him to wade into this matter without delay.
“Under normal circumstances, each senior staff ought to receive between N.1.2 million to N1.5 million as relocation allowance as introduced by the Federal Government in 2007, but we were only paid N252, 000 in three installments when our agitations became so much.
“On the issue of hazard allowance, Ekiti State University has been enjoying it since 2008, but we were denied on the basis that the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) was not paying. But nothing has so far been done even when FUTA has started paying.
“To end all these problems, we call on the university to implement the recommendations of the Prof Aganga-chaired committee, which stated that tax must no longer be based on consolidation but on basic salaries and the excess deductions refunded without delay.
“Again, the National Housing Scheme which the management has mandated should be made optional while all allowances being paid in Federal University, Otuoke, Bayelsa State and in Federal University, Lokoja, Kogi State and other Federal Universities established in 2011 should be paid without delay”, he said.
Another worker in the university, Ojo Foluso, said the vice chancellor would return N400 million to the Federal Ministry of Education as unspent subvention for 2014 this December, even when workers are suffering.
“ It has been an established practice that a university will get 30 per cent of any amount returned to the Federal Government. So what they are trying to do is to get the money not minding if we are made to suffer or not,” he said.
Efforts to reach Asuzu proved abortive; security men at the university gate told reporters that the VC had not come to the campus.
