NIGERIA NEWS:-NDU lecturers owed 15 months salaries

Graduate assistant lecturers in the Bayelsa State-owned Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island, Amassomma, are being owed 15 months salaries. It was also learnt that some professors who had been on sabbatical at the university had also not been paid their allowances for more than a year. The professors were formally engaged “to assist the university in teaching and research.” It was further learnt that the affected graduate assistant lecturers were duly employed by the authorities of the institution in October, 2013, to meet the manpower needs of the institution. The National Universities Commission had in 2012 withdrawn accreditation for five courses of study, including Law, at the university, citing lack of qualified academic staff and adequate infrastructure. The NUC also placed 22 other programmes of the school on suspension pending the time the authorities would satisfy the requirements to run such courses. Sources said all pleas to Governor Seriake Dickson by the unpaid teachers, the school’s Governing Council and the NDU chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities for their salaries to be paid had been unsuccessful.The governor was said to have complained that the Governing Council did not inform his office before issuing appointment letters to the lecturers. A source, who pleaded anonymity, said, “In August last year, the graduate assistants wrote to the governor and appealed to him to pay them their salaries but he refused. “Even cries by these graduate assistants that they are battling with rough condition of working without salaries which have brought them untold hardship did not move the governor.” He said the graduate assistants had been working in spite of Dickson’s hard-line posture. Dickson had during his tour of the university in March 2014 lamented the N6bn annual recurrent expenditure of the NDU. He also complained that the school’s N500m monthly recurrent expenditure was not also sustainable, asking the institution’s authorities to “reorder your priorities.” NDU’s chairman of ASUU, Beke Sese, confirmed that the graduate assistants and the professors on sabbatical had not been paid their emoluments. He described the development as sad, saying the university did no wrong for “deciding to retain bright alumni to encourage growth of manpower.” Sese said intervention by the academic body, including meetings with the governor’s Special Adviser on Treasury Matters, Timipre Seipulo, was not successful.