Former Deputy Vice Chancellor of Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Prof. Bedford Fubara, says dialogue remains the best option in resolving the lingering face-off between the state government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) of the institution which has culminated in the disruption of academic activities in the university for several months.

Fubara who bared his mind in an interview with The Tide in Port Harcourt appealed to Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and the striking university teachers to go back to the negotiation table, with a view to thrashing out all issues in dispute through dialogue.

He explained that the lingering face-off was an ill-wind that was adversely affecting the state and the students, appealing to all the parties to have a rethink.

The former Dean of the Faculty of Management Sciences of the university also had a word for the governor. He said it would not be a bad idea for him to accede to the demands of the striking university teachers which revolve around their emoluments.

He noted that lecturers in the state university were not paid as high as their counterparts in Niger Delta University, Wilberforce, Bayelsa State and Delta State University, Abraka. He pointed out that while lecturers of Niger Delta University were the highest paid in the country, lecturers of Delta State University were earning as much as their counterparts in federal universities.

Against this backdrop, the retired university teacher believed that if lecturers in RSUST were asking that they should be paid what their counterparts in other state universities were earning, they were not asking for too much. He argued that resorting to the court, as a way of resolving the lingering face-off, would only prolong the crisis.

“If the governor still insists and goes to court, it will be a long drawn war which is not good for the state,” he declared.

The Professor of Business Policy and Strategy while urging the governor to continue with the good works his administration has been doing for the state, stressed the need for human capital development to be given priority attention because, according to him, “human resources are more important than artifacts.”

The former deputy vice chancellor who decried a situation where clerks in oil companies earn more than university professors in the country argued that the state university would have experienced lack of qualified manpower if lecturers of the institution had all in the beginning drifted to the neigbhouring University of Port Harcourt for the sheer fact that there was disparity between their emoluments and those of their counterparts in federal universities.

Donatus Ebi