By Mohammad Yabagi.
But for some string pulling and political manoeuvring, the Vice Chancellor of Federal University Lokoja, Professor Angela Freeman Miri, would have been removed from her position and have her activities since assumption of office in the institution investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), our reporter has gathered.
In an investigation on the allegation of irregularities arising from her activities which threaten to run the nascent university aground, several staff of the institution blame her for the shoddy manner she is running activities of the school, which has left many of them dissatisfied.
Some allegations levelled against the Vice Chancellor include highhandedness, financial impropriety, and nepotism, among others.
While activities in the institution run at snail speed arising from the ongoing industrial action by the Non Academic Staff Union and the Joint Action Committee, the academic staff union is silently nursing gearing up for it own display of dissatisfaction through a strike action.
The Chairman of the institution’s arm of ASUU, Dr. Anselm Oyem in an interview, told our reporter that his members suffer shabbiness at the hands of Professor Miri-led leadership in the university.
Staff welfare; the moment you tamper with the welfare of staff, productivity would be low. Tampering with our rights is an indication that management wants us to begin to treat the campus of the school like some Local Government Secretariat where people just gather and not do anything to add to productivity.
All of us are working hard and giving our best to ensure the continuous functioning of the university.
Some of our colleagues who are supposed to have been promoted to professorial cadre since 2016 have not gotten their promotion letters.
There are rules guiding what it takes for them to get that promotion and the meet all criteria.
Other ranks such as those employed as Graduate Assistants that are supposed to have been promoted to the position of Assistant Lecturers have also not gotten their promotion and the rule is that where a graduate assistant completes his Masters Degree programme, he automatically upgrades to the position of Assistant Lecturer. That has not been regularised since 2016 and we are already in 2018.
We are making efforts in helping the administration to get things right. If not for our personal commitments towards academic excellence in this institution, a lot of things would not have been possible. We are not disrupting the smooth running of this university. In fact, all of us (lecturers) clean our various offices ourselves and ask the students to assist us in cleaning the classrooms since the university JAC is on strike.
Proper utilisation of TETFUND is not there. As an academic institution, staff here require regular training and retraining from local and international institutions. Those who are qualified to go for such training are being held back as funds are not being released for them to proceed for further training.
“It is unfortunate that our colleagues are being held back by the management under Professor Angela Miri and are not being allowed to go further in the upgrade of their qualifications and proficiency in the academia. This is threatening to retard the growth of the university. It has got to stop before the institution in plunged further into academic pariah.
“Also, the Industrial Action being embarked upon by the Joint Action Committee comprising of all the Non Academic Staff Unions on campus has also put more pressure on us as academic staff. We are now required to clean our environment of work. We do it because we cannot call on the students who are only here for their studies to do the cleaning. So, we are contributing towards the growth of the institution in our own ways. Management needs to step up and appreciate our commitments to duty by ensuring they do the needful,” Dr. Oyem stated.
On the prompt payment of salaries, the academic don expressed worry as to why it would take days after the management of the institution received staff salaries from the Federal Government before onward payment to individual account numbers despite advancement in technology and said it was not good enough.
“We know that the Treasury Single Account (TSA) System is slowing things down. But what stops the management from ensuring that each staff gets his/her alert within 24 hours of receipt of alert from the federation account? A situation where days after receipt of our salaries, they are kept there for days before being paid is not good enough. They must pay us our salaries as and when due.
“It is also very sad that we but markers and other teaching tools to enable us do our jobs. It is disheartening that we cannot access those basic things that we need to effectively teach in our various classes. Having known this, the management has not found it expedient to grant us any form of impress as augmentation of these extra efforts we are putting in.”
Asked whether he has taken up any of the issues raised, he said ASUU leadership in the university had written severally to management on the issue without response from them. He said they had continued to write, but that the leadership is adamant, despite genuineness of the issues raised.
He was however quick to admit that he led other members of ASUU leadership to a meeting with the management where all the issues he highlighted were raised and that management promised to look into them, but that it has always been about rhetoric with the current helmsmen in the institution.
Another impeccable source close to management, who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the management members were dissatisfied with the management style of Professor Miri whom he said, has devised various means of planting individuals from her home state of Plateau in various cadres without due diligence.
The source accused her of favouritism and other underhand dealings that have caused discomfort with other members of the institution’s leadership. It added that the Vice Chancellor is currently being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and that it was only some forces at the top echelon of government that are still keeping her away from being detained by the EFCC.
One of the scheme, a source informed our correspondent, that Professor Miri uses as a conduit to funnel the institution’s fleeced resources, is the recently acquired Liaison Office in Abuja. The contact office is said to be headed by a lady suspected to be the Vice Chancellor’s Daughter-in-Law-to-be. The process of Professor Miri’s son’s wife-to-be as the Liaison Officer has also raised eye-brows.
Head of Department in the University’s Faculty of Sciences who does not want to be named, also told our correspondent that the entire system reek of her favouritism and corruption tendencies, saying they had had enough of her.
Another Non Academic Staff of Kogi origin, wondered why the rest indigenes of the area in management cadre would allow her continue in the manner she runs the school.
Several calls put through to Professor Angela Miri’s phone to seek for clarification were not picked or returned.
