As economic crisis bites, UNIUYO lecturers receive salaries in bits

 

The University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, is grappling with how to pay salary to its lecturers, no thanks to the shortfall in federal government funding to federal-owned universities across the country.
UNIUYO lecturers, including non-teaching staff, have been receiving fractions
of their salaries since the beginning of this year.
“The problem started in February. We were told that it would be over when the (2016) budget is passed. But it has persisted,” the university’s director of information, Godfrey Essien, told PREMIUM TIMES.
Mr. Essien said UNIUYO workers received only 23 per cent of their June salary. Some lecturers who spoke with this newspaper said it was between 21 and 22 per cent.
At 23 per cent, it means a lecturer who earns N200, 000 monthly salary for instance, would be made to receive N46, 000 only. The percentage could get as low as 10, depending on how much the university has to pay for staff salary.
Mr. Essien explained how the payment is done: When money comes in, the university pays the staff the arrears of the previous months, and then whatever fund is left with the school determines the percentage of staff salary that would be paid for the current month.
The backlog isn’t more than a month salary, he said.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Uyo, Aniefiok Essien, said the shortfall in federal funding to the university was about N60 million monthly.

The situation in Uniuyo, Mr. Essien said, wasn’t as bad as that of other schools. The vice chancellor said the Ministry of Education was working on resolving the problem.
The Chairman of the Uniuyo branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Aniekan Brown, declined to comment on the issue when PREMIUM TIMES contacted him, saying that the local chapter stands on the position already taken on the issue by the national leadership of the union.
“As at the moment, all Nigerian universities are in a state of serious funding crisis, which is becoming worse by the day. Beginning from December 2015, almost all public Universities began to experience a drastic reduction in their personnel cost,” the national president of ASUU, Biodun Ogunyemi, had said in a press conference few days ago in Abuja.
“For example, the University of Ibadan witnessed a shortfall of N308 million in December 2015, which was reduced to N96 million in January.”
Mr. Ogunyemi said the federal government was still yet to disburse N495 billion as at the first quarter of 2016 in respect of Needs Assessment Fund for Revitalization of Public Universities, going by the 2013 MoU it entered into with ASUU.
“Although the federal government promised that it would not relent in implementing the MoU and will also gradually work towards the 26% budgetary allocation recommended by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), this promise has not been translated into action. Rather, budgetary allocation to education dropped from 12% to 11% and 8% in 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively,” Mr. Ogunyemi said, while calling on the government to address the shortfall in salaries in order to douse tension in the universities.
Three Uniuyo lecturers who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES said they understood that the problem had much to do with the current economic crisis in the country, and not with the university management.
A lecturer in the faculty of Arts said the vice chancellor, Mr. Essien, was transparent and effective in communicating to the staff the challenges associated with the payment of salary.
“The bursar sends to us regular notices. The vice chancellor addressed the university congregation last week on the issue,” the lecturer said.
“That’s why you won’t see any well informed lecturer complain; they could complain, not against the school management, but against the federal government.”

source: Premium Times