UNIJOS: Bogged down by incessant crisis

University of Jos (UNIJOS) teachers are on strike again. YUSUFU AMINU IDEGU examines some of the issues causing unrest in the university.

There has been disquiet at the University of Jos (UNIJOS) since the beginning of the year.  Teachers are not happy. Last Thursday, the institution’s 1,090 teachers began a strike, which the local chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) described as “total, comprehensive and indefinite.”

In the last four years, there has been at least one strike per year over a variety of issues, especially welfare. This is what the Vice-Chancellor (VC), Prof Hayward Babale Mufayai has been contending with in the past four years.

Students have a grouse with the school management on what they described as harsh policies which culminated in the disbandment of their union and the suspension of the president, Abel Nok Nduu. The implication of the suspension is that the final year Law student will not graduate with his classmates. Furthermore, he will not proceed to Law School to complete his professional legal training.

The students’ problem with the management is a spillover of last November’s riot over lack of facilities and fee hike.  They had asked the university to stop the N10,000 yearly development levy and the N4,000 ICT fee they pay without enjoying facilities.  They also complained about the late registration fee of N10,000, which they wanted removed; and the N25,000 acceptance fee for new students and hostel accommodation fee of N13,400, which they wanted reduced.

Some school properties were destroyed during the riot. This forced the management to shut down the university. When it was reopened, the management imposed N6,000 levy on students to replace the damaged properties.

Most students are afraid to talk about Abel’s suspension for fear of the sledge hammer of the VC. But the courageous among them, condemned the punishment.

One of such is Francis Zitta, a 400-Level Law student.   “The VC’s decision to suspend our president is too much punishment for one offence. The VC made us to pay a riot levy of N6,000; he also disbanded the SUG Exco.  As if that was not enough, he suspended the final year student so that the boy will graduate. I see this as wickedness.  Some of us are asking, how many punishments should the boy serve for one offence,” he said.

Racheal Ibrahim, a 400-Level student of Sociology, said the levy was enough to atone for their wrongs.

“All of us students have been punished for the riot by paying a damage levy of 6,000, why should the VC single out the SUG leader for another punishment?  To me, that is wickedness.  We all did the riot; it was not the fault of our SUG. So I advise the VC to withdraw the suspension to allow the boy enjoy his graduation after spending five years in the university,” she said.

ASUU Chairman, UNIJOS branch, Dr. Christopher Piwuna, faulted the levy, describing it as too high. He claimed that the damaged facilities were replaced by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).

Piwuna, who sympathised with the students, said: “The forceful collection of N6,000 is another exploitation by management because the properties damaged were estimated to cost a little above N10 million, but the management eventually made about N200 million from the levy. Meanwhile, the replacement of the damaged properties was carried out by TETFund The university management are yet to account for how they spent the riot levy collected from each students.”

The teacher wondered why the students did not hold the management accountable for the levy.

“I expect students to ask management to account for that levy they paid in January this year.  Their SUG president, a final year student from the Law department was suspended for no given reason, and the students are not asking questions. The university community is not well, all is not well with us, a lot of things are going wrong” said Piwuna.

The Nation gathered that the management has yet to replace any of the broken louvres.

On the lecturers’ issue with the management, Piwuna said it had to do with the nonpayment of some outstanding allowances.

He said: “The dispute started from June 2013 after the six-month national strike by ASUU. As a solution to the problems, the Federal Government released the sum of N1.6 billion to the management of University of Jos to settle outstanding payment of allowances and other claims of academic and non-academic staff.

“The school management created problems in the sharing formula between its academic staff and non-academic staff. ASUU protested that immediately. In the lopsided payment made by management, as I am talking to you now, 300 ASUU members have not gotten their money since the last payment in 2013.

“But instead of management to even talk of resolving the lopsided payment, they came up with claims that some ASUU members were over paid in the process. We agreed with management to verify it and make the deductions accordingly. The deductions made by management in the so-called over payment even overshot the original sum paid to members. That also formed part of the unresolved controversies.”

Another issue ASUU is fighting for is for the university to absorb some lecturers that have been working on part-time basis for the last 10 years.

“There is also the unresolved demand by lecturers of School of Remedial Studies and Centre for Continuing Education of the University to be absorbed into their mother department of the university.  It has been a long term issue that has remained unresolved for more than 10 years. Two Vice Chancellors have served and gone without giving attention to this demand.  Such attitude of management kills the morale of staff.  We have been pleading with the present management to see reasons to absorb this category of workers, but they turned a deaf ear to our plea.

“Apart from that there is the issue of unpaid Postgraduate Supervision Allowance which has not been paid since 2005. There are 157 lecturers affected by that. We complained but school authority never bothered,” he said.

Furthermore, the lecturers are complaining about their remuneration being lower than their counterparts in other Federal Government

“There is the lingering issue of disparity of salaries among federal Universities.  That of University of Jos is lower than the rest and we wonder why the disparity. We keep asking, ‘is this not a federal university like others, why can’t we receive what our colleagues in other federal universities are collecting as salaries?’ When our members here go on sabbatical leave in other Federal Universities, they collect good salary, but when they come back here they get something less, why is that so? That issue remains unresolved by the UNIJOS management.

The ASUU chairman said efforts made to resolve the issues with the management have proved abortive.

“It will interest you to know that within the last six month alone, we have sent 13 letters to management over these unresolved issues.  We have also met with the Vice Chancellor five times.  Our zonal ASUU in Bauchi has visited the VC twice over these same issues.  We have written twice to the pro-chancellor. In May this year, we gave a 21-day strike notice to management. In spite of all these efforts, we were never taken serious by the school authority. We were shocked when the management came out to deny even the agreement we reached with them on how to resolve the issues. The last agreement between us and management on payment of these allowances was August 28, 2015, but as I’m talking to you now in October, the management has failed to meet up the agreement,” said Piwuna.

However, the school authority believed the ASUU members had no reasons to embark on strike action.  The Vice Chancellor was unavailable to respond to the issues.  However, the Registrar, Jilli Dandam, acknowledged only two of the issues ASUU raised – nonpayment of earned allowances, and the postgraduate supervision allowance.

In a statement, the Registrar said: “The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) University of Jos branch on Thursday 22 October, 2015 forwarded to the Vice Chancellor, a letter informing him of embarking on a strike action which it described as total, indefinite and comprehensive. The letter did not state the reasons for embarking on the strike action.

“However, management will want to inform all staff, students, members of the public and other stakeholders that ASUU University of Jos had been dialoguing on two issues with management – the disbursement of earned academic allowance and the payment of Postgraduate Supervision Allowance (PSA).

“On the disbursement of academic allowance, council set up a technical committee chaired by a former ASUU chairman to resolve the lingering issue. Council also directed the implementation of the report believing that it will put to rest the issue of disbursement of earned academic allowance.

The Registrar also accused the union for being economical with the truth about the number of academics affected by the unpaid allowances.

“The ASUU University of Jos, without notice, reported management to its national headquarters alleging that 681 members of ASUU were being owed earned academic allowance. Efforts to make ASUU submit the names for verification and reconciliation was resisted, claiming that the lists was contained in the council committee’s report. This is not correct. There was no such list in the council committee report chaired by the former chairman of ASUU.

Dandam also noted that the university has been paying the PSA gradually to the workers involved.

“On the issue of payment of Postgraduate Supervision Allowance, the ASUU University of Jos protested nonpayment of the allowance from 2004 to 2009 and 2013 to 2014. Management drew the attention of ASUU EXCO that the matter was being processed as the claims were being forwarded in batches to bursar for payment. As at the time management met with ASUU executive, nine members of staff had been paid. As at 15th September, 2015 when the Federal Government directive on Treasury Single Account became effective, an additional 50 out of 150 staff have been paid while 68 have been processed and ready for payment. ASUU is aware that for the past six weeks, no federal university of ministerial department in this country has had access to any fund from the Treasury Single Account apart from salaries.

However, as the strike lasts, the students are at the receiving end. They now have to prepare to prolong their stay in the school beyond their calculation. The most hit by the strike are the Postgraduate students who thought of rounding up their academic program by December 2015. They are lamenting that their academic programme will be extended to 2016.

A parent, Mr Samson Dusu said of the closure: “No one is happy with this strike, the university management and ASUU don’t always consider the interest of other stakeholders while taking decision for strike, it is not in the interest of any parent for their children to stay longer than four years for a degree program. But in Unijos, you only know when you enter, you can never tell when you will graduate due it incessant strike action.