Crisis Looms at Ile-Ife Again -By Dave I.D

This piece was written on 30th March, 2017.

It is peculiarly unfortunate that pupils of OAU Staff School are being denied their rights to write their 2016/17 Second Term Examination this week. No one knows the fate of the class 6 pupils whose National Common Entrance Examination comes up next weekend.

Ironically, though, while these victims of circumstances are playing their lives away (and forgetting what they have studied) the worse hit are their teachers who are “STAYING ACTION” because of the management’s mis-interpretation of the clause; and because of being owed close to 12 months of salaries in this recession period, borrowing money to fuel their cars just to be in school all this while.

A few months back, there was jubilation in the air as the Industrial Court of Nigeria ruled in the favour of these workers on December 5, 2016. Following this ruling, other federal universities immediately settled their staff school teachers, clearing a backlog of arrears and paying them regularly. Most have already received their March salaries as you are reading this.

Question is: why should PACESETTERS be different? The Federal Govt (Prof. Adamu Adamu) sent the SAME MEMO to VCs of Federal Universities to “STAY ACTION” and suspend the previous sack process of these teachers,  a message which the Acting VC of OAU , Prof. Anthony Elujoba in his wisdom, interpreted to mean that UNIVERSITIES ALREADY PAYING THEIR STAFF SCHOOL TEACHERS SHOULD KEEP ON PAYING; WHILE FEDERAL UNIVERSITIES WHO ARE OWING THEIR TEACHERS SHOULD KEEP OWING, KEEP ACCUMULATING MORE DEBT AND KEEP SUBJECTING THESE TEACHERS TO MORE MISERY AND PAIN. What an empathetic leader!

Therefore, by extension, the teachers are now forced to apply the same interpretation to their work: STAY ACTION!

It is a known fact that the acting VC, who already sees himself as an “EFCC RAT,” is being pressured into inactivity by the duo of Mrs. Josephine Akeredolu (BURSAR) and Mr. David Oladotun Awoyemi (REGISTRAR) both claiming that there is no money. Yet, they went ahead and just this week bought a new car of N45 Million for the new council chairman, Prof Ogunbiyi.

There is no money, yet other staff of Obafemi Awolowo University never once felt even remotely, any shortfall from the federal government. As if the evils perpetrated by the past administration were not enough (spending staff schools fund on NUGA), now this administration is sharing monies sent by the government to be used to pay the Staff School unit over on top of the salaries of the other staff in the mainstream to complement the shortfall from the Federal Govt at the expense of Staff School teachers.

So, what will be the fate of the innocent pupils? And their teachers? The non-payment of their salaries has already made life unbearable for them in this recession. Noble teachers are now corporate beggars, unable to meet their financial obligations, resulting in their own children and wards dropping out of schools; children who have forgotten the taste of meat, fish, bread and tea; children whose medical bills could not be paid by their parents.

Check out all the houses on the street at night and you will see that the families of these federal workers are the only ones sleeping in the darkness, with no sound of laughter and joy, families of teachers who were interviewed by a governing council, screened and eventually offered permanent and pensionable appointments.

Let us share this information and together decry the insensitivity of OAU management to the plight of these students and their teachers. I am reaching out there to people with human hearts, men of morals and mothers with maternal instincts. Let us feel each others’ pain. That is what makes us human.

If we lean back, fold our hand and do nothing, perhaps this  might just be sitting on a keg of gun powder, a time bomb ticking into a not too far distance, waiting to explode.