UNILAG lecturers protest poor conditions of service

UNILAG lecturers protested yesterday to what they call “poor of conditions of service by the school management.

The members of the Academic staff union of university(ASUU) university of Lagos chapter lecturers started the protest around 8:30am in the morning yesterday moving from faculty to faculty displaying placard bearing their grievance and were singing solidarity songs in the school premises.

During the protest, Dr Adelaja Adekoya, the chairman of UNILAG ASUU, spoke to reporters.

He said “For many years, academic staff in UNILAG have been facing a lot challenges and these manifest mainly in our condition of service.

For instance, we are facing a lot of challenge of notional promotion. what that means is that for people promoted through professional grade, their papers take a long time before they are completed.

“Also, when you send out your papers for processing, it is meant to be back dated and the benefits also back dated but at university of Lagos, when your paper is back dated, you never get the benefits attached to it.

We had a local implementation committee in 2010 which was incidentally headed by the present vice chancellor, prof Rahaman Bello.
then, we all agreed that the issue of notional promotion would be a thing of the past in the university and that all those who have been promoted will be paid their arrears .But in what could be described as a paradox of monumental proportion, this is not being implemented.

Recently, newly promoted and associate professors were made to sign that they cannot even protest issue of notional promotions. Now, we are telling the university that what they are doing is very wrong.

“We are not used to giving ultimatum;UNILAG ASUU is known for action.

“Although we don’t want strike, we may eventually be forced to embark on comprehensive indefinite and total strike.”

Earlier, the acting vice chancellor of UNILAG ,Prof.Babajide Alo, had tried to dissuade the lecturers from protesting, adding that the protest was unnecessary.
He said that most of the grievances being protested against were already being looked into by the school management.

The protesting lecturers on their,said if nothing is done about their demands by the school management, they would be forced to go on indefinite strike.