OOU boils as students lock out VC, workers

Tension rose in Ago Iwoye, Ijebu North Local Government Area of Ogun State as hundreds of students of the Olabisi Onabanjo University continued their protest.
The students barricaded the gates to the temporary and permanent sites of the institution, preventing the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Wale Olaitan, other management staff and non-academic staff from entering the campuses.

The students were said to be protesting the unending strike by the academic staff of the institution over the failure of the state government to pay the salaries and allowances of the staff for months.

It was learnt that after the meeting of the OOU chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, where the management of the institution failed to resolve the six-month-old strike of the lecturers, the students started their protest.
Confusion has continued about the directive by the Governing Council of the institution to the students to resume academic activities, which was anchored on the premise that the lecturers had been paid three months salary arrears.

The lecturers, however, refused to resume lectures, claiming that the management had only paid one month salary, dashing the hope of the students, who had stormed the school in anticipation of resumption of academic activities.

It was learnt that the protest started at the permanent site of the university after the chairman of ASUU in the school, Dr. Adesola Nasir, addressed the students on the stalemate in the lingering crisis between the academic staff and the school’s management.

An official of the Non-Academic Staff Union in OOU, who craved anonymity said on the telephone that the students decided to express their anger when it was clear that one of the parties had been deceiving them on the state of the strike by ASUU.

“After they were addressed by the ASUU chairman to the effect that the strike could not be called off as the school still owed the lecturers, the students mobilised themselves to the canteen, where they found some lecturers enjoying their drinks. They chased the lecturers away from the canteen,” he said.

A student in the Department of Economics, identified simply as Wale, told sources that the students heard that the school had secured a loan to off-set its indebtedness to the lecturers, expressing surprise that the ASUU members had not been paid.

“We went to the banks in Ago and Ijebu-Igbo and discovered that the school had only paid one month salary to the lecturers. We have no other option but to let the world know what the school was doing to us and our future. We shall continue this protest until they resolve their grievances and allow us to resume,” he said.