Oyo Tertiary Institutions Workers Begin Indefinite Strike

• Oyo Tertiary Institutions Workers Begin Indefinite Strike

All workers of the Oyo State-owned tertiary institutions yesterday began an indefinite strike over the alleged 25 per cent of their salaries being paid by the government since November 2015.

The six institutions include: The Polytechnic, Ibadan; Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo; Oyo State College of Agriculture and Technology; The Ibarapa Polytechnic, Eruwa; The Oke-Ogun Polytechnic, Saki and College of Education, Lanlate.

Chairman of the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU), The Polytechnic Ibadan chapter, Comrade Ibrahim Adekunle Akande, who addressed newsmen in Ibadan, said the academic and non-academic workers of the institutions will not go back to work until government begins payment of their full salaries.

He alleged the of reducing the subvention to the institutions, saying, “only paltry 25 per cent is being paid and this has affected the ability of the management to pay us full salaries. And this has caused no fewer than loss of 10 lives of the workers who could not meet up with their financial obligations.

But the state Commissioner for Information, Toye Arulogun, denied that the workers have been receiving 25 per cent of their salaries.

“What happened to their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), there is a paradigm shift in Oyo State and government cannot continue to spoon feed them. They enjoy autonomy and part of it is to generate revenue, subvention is a grant,” he said.

He, however, advised the striking workers to meet with the Commissioner for Education, Prof Joseph Olowofela and resolve the matter peacefully.

The union leader said: “This started in November 2015, the government of the day just woke up one day and slashed our subvention, they have been given us 25 per cent since then, and that 25 per cent is nothing to write home about.