400 staff sacked at Micheal Okpara University

On Monday, 400 academic and non-academic staffs of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State employed by the former Vice Chancellor, Prof. Hilary Edeoga were sacked by the management of the institution.
It was revealed by some sources that the sacked workers were being owed six months’ salary, and the remaining 25 per cent of their entitlements.

The affected workers said they had lost confidence in the Academic Staff Union of Universities hence their decision to take the matter up with civil society organisations including the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria.

The workers fate was said to have been decide at a recent meeting held by the governing council of the MOUAU.

Some of those affected workers who claimed they had attended a regularization interview conducted by the previous VC in 2016 in furtherance of their career at the university said the sack came as a shock to them.

Although they said they were not able to collect their letters of regularization before Edeoga was sacked by the Muhammadu Buhari led administration, Chidi Nwankwo, one of the affected workers said as soon as the current VC assumed office, he declared the regularization inconclusive.

Nwankwo said the VC, Prof. Francis Otunta mandated all affected staff to reapply for their jobs stating good reasons why their appointment should be renewed.

He said, “We all reapplied, although we were apprehensive that the new VC wanted to sack most of us and replace us with his kinsmen and friends based on previous experiences.

“We were not surprised when news broke out that the Governing Council of the university decided to sack all of us. We had been complaining about it right from the day he declared the regularisation interview inconclusive.

“Some of us were offered temporary appointments, while others were head-hunted to join the university from other universities. Majority of us were interviewed after sometime, which is a standard civil service rule, in a bid to regularise our appointments.”

In separate interviews, with Prof. Ike Nwachukwu a member of the governing council of MOUAU, and the ASUU chairman, Prof. Chinyere Echendu, told our correspondent that the decision was final.

“It is a management decision and so it’s the VC or Public Relations Officer of the university that can respond to your enquiries. I don’t have any authority to do that. I am not denying the fact that I was at the meeting. But, after the meeting, there are statutory people who respond to such issues,” Nwachukwu said.

Echendu said, “They should be up to 400 of them that are affected. But no worker was sacked. Anybody who told you that is not telling the truth. The group you are talking about are people who were given letters on temporary basis. And that automatically terminated after one year.”

Also, a former ASUU chairman in MOUAU, Prof. U.A.U. Onyebinama, said there was no provision for renewal in their condition of service.

He said, “It is not easy to sack a worker. The problem we have is that there were people who were on temporary appointment, which, just on its own, automatically elapsed. So, it is not about the university sacking anybody.”