Academic
Staff Union of Universities has vowed to tackle the management of the
Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State over the alleged
high-handedness of its Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olufemi Mimiko.
Addressing journalists in Akure on
Monday, the ASUU National President, Dr. Nasir Fagge, said the union
would resist any further attempt by the vice-chancellor to turn the
university into a personal empire.
According to Fagge, Mimiko has not hidden his hatred for the ASUU and other trade unions in the university.
Flanked by other national leaders of the
union, Fagge alleged that
Mimiko’s hatred for ASUU manifested last week
when he reportedly directed the university’s security men to attack ASUU
members led by the union’s Vice-President, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi.
Fagge said, “The anti-union posture of
AAUA vice-chancellor should worry any right-thinking person by at least
two reasons. Here is a social scientist, who we ordinarily expect to
promote robust debates in the estate of knowledge, initiating and
perpetrating the muscling of opinions and circumscribing of the
fundamental rights of association and expression in the university given
to him to administer.
“Also, it is unimaginable that a
vice-chancellor of a state-owned university in a Labour Party-controlled
state would unashamedly canvass the frustration of labour activists.”
Fagge also identified the
vice-chancellor’s alleged crime to include refusal to pay lecturers
their three and half months outstanding salaries, ban of union’s vehicle
from the university and disregard of the non-victimisation clause in
the resolutions reached following the suspension of the July-December
2013 strike.
He added, “The situation at the AAU,
Akungba-Akoko, is festering and, if not arrested, may destroy the
academic and ethical soul of that university.
“Adekunle Ajasin is a public university,
not a private estate. ASUU is never associated with illegality and our
activities are always open to public scrutiny,” he said.
Meanwhile, the university’s Assistant
Registrar, Information, Protocol and Public Relations, Mr. Victor
Akinpelumi, has described the allegations as “strange and untrue”
Akinpelumi, who said the VC had been
working hard to make the university a world class institution, insisted
that the ASUU allegation were false.
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