Academic Staff Union of Universities has vowed to tackle the management of the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State over the alleged high-handedness of its Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olufemi Mimiko.
Addressing journalists in Akure on Monday, the ASUU National President, Dr. Nasir Fagge, said the union would resist any further attempt by the vice-chancellor to turn the university into a personal empire.
According to Fagge, Mimiko has not hidden his hatred for the ASUU and other trade unions in the university.
Flanked by other national leaders of the union, Fagge alleged that Mimiko’s hatred for ASUU manifested last week when he reportedly directed the university’s security men to attack ASUU members led by the union’s Vice-President, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi.
Fagge said, “The anti-union posture of AAUA vice-chancellor should worry any right-thinking person by at least two reasons. Here is a social scientist, who we ordinarily expect to promote robust debates in the estate of knowledge, initiating and perpetrating the muscling of opinions and circumscribing of the fundamental rights of association and expression in the university given to him to administer.
“Also, it is unimaginable that a vice-chancellor of a state-owned university in a Labour Party-controlled state would unashamedly canvass the frustration of labour activists.”
Fagge also identified the vice-chancellor’s alleged crime to include refusal to pay lecturers their three and half months outstanding salaries, ban of union’s vehicle from the university and disregard of the non-victimisation clause in the resolutions reached following the suspension of the July-December 2013 strike.
He added, “The situation at the AAU, Akungba-Akoko, is festering and, if not arrested, may destroy the academic and ethical soul of that university.
“Adekunle Ajasin is a public university, not a private estate. ASUU is never associated with illegality and our activities are always open to public scrutiny,” he said.
Meanwhile, the university’s Assistant Registrar, Information, Protocol and Public Relations, Mr. Victor Akinpelumi, has described the allegations as “strange and untrue”
Akinpelumi, who said the VC had been working hard to make the university a world class institution, insisted that the ASUU allegation were false.