..as students protest, lament dearth of lecturers after sack
From KEHINDE ADEWOLE, Ado-Ekiti
Barely a week after a group of over 250 staff of the Ekiti State University, who were disengaged recently, threatened Court action against the state government and Management of Ekiti State University, another set of almost 200 staff have also served the University management and the government same through their Counsel, Bar. Perebo Monde of Perebo Pesta Monde & Co.
The complainants claimed their disengagement was cruel and inhuman as the definition of irregular appointments according to the management seems ambiguous. They insisted that the Management had found the appointable and recommended them as such after they had given them both written and oral interviews in March 2016.
” The legal notice said: ” The University Council after its sitting in December 5, 2019 disengaged over a thousand staff of the 37year old University for several reasons ranging from irregular appointments to age falsification and over stay in the services of the University.
“We are not in a Banana Republic where anything goes, you can’t employ people, confirm them appropriately after 2years of service and promote them only to alleged that their appointments were irregular in a bid to score political cheap points. Worrisome is the fact that the VC under whose watch all this brigandage is happening was a member of the Governing Council when these recruitments hold in 2016, only God knows why a process he was actively involved in is now termed irregular”.
” It’s expected that the University reverses the disengagement or face legal actions at the Akure Division of the Federal Industrial Court after the expiration of the 30days ultimatum, ” is said.
In another development, some students of the Faculties of Engineering, Sciences and Agricultural Sciences were on a peaceful protest around the University on Monday, January,.as a result of inadequate manpower to take them academic and practical classes
Speaking with newsmen, a leader of the students, who simply gave his name as Adeoku,said: “The entire Faculty of Agriyc with six departments has a single Technologist left, 80% of Technologists in the the departments of the Faculty of Engineering were sacked. This is having negative effects on them us and we are being mandated to pay all prescribed fees to date for practicals and others yet, we only loiter abour the campus, doing nothing.
” Administrative work on campus are almost collapsed as offices are locked for lack of man power. Reliable sources has it that six academic staff were sacked in Physics Department while 13 Academic Staffs as well as 11 Technologists sacked in SLT Department. Meanwhile, Ekiti State prides herself as the Fountain of Knowledge among the comity of states, ” he said.
