L-R: Newly appointed Flag Officer Commanding (FOC) Eastern Naval Command, Rear Adm. James Oluwole, Commandant, Nigerian Navy Secondary School, Port Harcourt, Commander Feyisara Solebo and Command Operations Officer, Eastern Naval Command, Commodore Razaq Babalola, during the FOC’s familiarisation tour of Navy formations and units in Port Harcourt yesterday.

The Academic Staff
Union of Universities (ASUU), has called on the Bayelsa State Government to immediately commence the payment of four months salary arrears owed workers of the state-owned Niger Delta University (NDU), Wilberforce Island.
This is even as the union called for the declaration of a state of emergency in the education sector of the state.
ASUU, which stated this at a press conference in Yenagoa, decried a situation where workers of the institution had not been paid their monthly salaries since January, describing the trend as a grave problem threatening the academia in the Port Harcourt Zone, comprising Rivers and Bayelsa States.
The Zonal Coordinator of ASUU, Port Harcourt Zone, Prof. Beke Sese, while fielding questions from newsmen said no responsible government should treat the issue of prompt payment of salaries with such levity and nonchalance.
According to Sese, “It is unreasonable to expect high standards of academic  activities in a university where lecturers are unable to meet their basic needs of feeding, housing, medical and transportation due to non-payment of salaries for several months.”
To this end, the ASUU Zonal Coordinator urged the Bayelsa State Government to take its contractual obligation to pay salaries much more seriously.
And we demand that all arrears of salaries owed all staff of NDU be paid immediately. Staff of NDU have endured untold hardship and deprivation and we shall not allow this dangerous trend to continue. Enough is enough”, he said.
ASUU also identified poor funding of state-owned universities in the Port Harcourt Zone as another problem which has given the union grave concern.
According to Prof. Sese, the present level of funding of NDU by the Bayelsa State Government  was nothing to write home about and insisted that the university was beyond doubt among the least funded in the world.
He buttressed his point by citing poor and dilapidated infrastructure dotting the university landscape, and called on Beyelsa State Government to declare a state of emergency in the education sector.
He also castigated Governor Seriake Dickson for failure to release the N6.2 billion he promised NDU for the upgrade of infrastructure.
Conversely, the Chairman of ASUU at the Rivers State University of Science and technology (RSUST), Dr. Puyate Sobere, while also answering a question said the case of Rivers State was different, as the Governor of the State, Chief Nyesom Wike was regularly paying the salaries and allowances of workers and equally funding the university as exemplified by the recent release of N1 billion to the university for development of infrastructure.
While commending the governor for this gesture, Dr Sobere called on his Bayelsa State counterpart, Hon. Seriake Dickson to emulate Wike’s good example. The ASUU chairman also disclosed that the university authorities were deliberating with Governor Wike on the plan by the Rivers State Government to withdraw financial responsibility for university staff schools, assuring that the deliberations would produce  a positive outcome at the end of the day.

Donatus Ebi