ASUU dismisses allegations of AAU students graduating abroad and opposes management methods.

THE Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) chapter at Ambrose Alli University (AAU) Ekpoma in Edo State denied allegations that it was graduating students from outside Nigeria on Wednesday, even as it took a swipe at the Governor Godwin Obaseki administration, which it said was running the university contrary to standard university management practises.

Dr. Cyril Onogbosele, chairman of the Union, said at a press conference in Benin City that the university’s management, in collusion with the state governor’s Special Intervention Team (SIT), has been making unproven allegations against its members, including alleged tax evasion, certificate and academic transcript racketeering while failing to meet most of its obligations, such as deductions for state health insurance without following the Act, some employees’ salaries were not paid, ASUU check-off dues were not remitted, and the university’s funding was inadequate, among other things.

“Does graduation of students in a university start and end with “marking of scripts,” ASUU considers this allegation of academic fraud as an illusion and demands publication of the names, courses, departments, years of graduation of the students in question, as well as details of the lecturers involved in the alleged academic fraud,” he said.

According to the SIT, it discovered a series of tax evasion by personnel totaling over N2 billion. “If the claim is true, one would think that the names of employees who have failed to pay their taxes would have been published, and the offenders prosecuted and punished.”

He accused management and SIT of denying university employees access to their workplace unless they pay a charge before driving onto the school grounds to enter their offices.

As an alternative, he urged Governor Obaseki to put into action the recommendations agreed at a stakeholders meeting on the university’s future on March 16th of this year.
The university’s management has yet to respond to the issues presented, since the university’s Head of Corporation Communications, Otunba Mike Aladenika, had failed to answer to inquiries at the time of filing this report.