Osun Lecturer faints in Bank after seeing N150 as February salary in his account

A lecturer in a tertiary
institution in Osun State
(name withheld), on
Thursday, collapsed inside a
bank located within the
institution's premises following a discrepancy in his
salary.

Witnesses said the lecturer
fainted after discovering that
his account had only been
credited with N150 by the
state government as 50
percent of his February salary instead of N150,000. The lecturer, who is a post-
graduate student at the
Federal University of
Technology, Akure (FUTA),
according to a witness,
lamented, after being resuscitated by the bank's
officials, that the money paid by the government into his
account could not even
transport him to Akure,
where he was billed to write
an examination.

The man, it was gathered, also
disclosed that he had some
outstanding fees to pay at the
university which he had
proposed to pay with the
expected salary.

As of the time of this report,
TribuneNG reports that he was
said to be in a private hospital
in Osogbo where his blood
pressure, which had increased
as a result of the shocking discovery in his account, was
being managed.

Staff members of four
tertiary institutions in the
state – Osun State College of
Technology, Esa-Oke; Osun
State Polytechnic, Iree and
colleges of education in Ilesa and Ila-Oragun – have
expressed concern over
alleged discrepancies in the
payment of their salaries since
November 2014.

A lecturer in the Department
of Accounting in one of the
schools (name withheld)
lamented that his gross salary
and net pay were N210,000
and N140,000, respectively, but he only received the sum
of N260 as his February salary.

A management staff of the
institution, whose salary is
about N400,000, was also said
to have received N12,000 for
the same month.


Many teaching and non- teaching staff members of the
institutions have criticised the
state government for what
they called the abnormalities
being witnessed in the
payment of their outstanding salaries.


It was also alleged that
monies deducted by the state
government from workers'
salaries for the purpose of
schemes like the cooperative
society had not been remitted since August 2014.

When Saturday Tribune
visited the institutions on
Friday, the gates were locked
by workers who were
protesting the development.

A worker at one of the
institutions told Saturday
Tribune that he collected the
sum of N30,000 in December,
N58,000 in January, while he
received N125 as his take- home for the month of
February.

He said fuelling his car from
Ilesa to Esa-Oke had become a
problem, just as he had been
unable to collect his children's
report sheets from a private
school in Ilesa because he could not pay their tuition.

The Public Relations Officer of
the Academic Staff Union of
state-owned institutions, and
ASUP chairman of the state
Polytechnic, Iree, Mr Dotun
Omisore, in an interview with Saturday Tribune confirmed
the ordeal of the lecturer who
fainted and also condemned
the "abnormalities and
irregularities" in the payment
of salaries of workers, saying that "we will not call off our
strike until all our salaries and
deductions" are paid by the
state government.

Omisore warned that the
deduction of workers'
contributions to the
contributory pension scheme
by the state government since
about 36 months ago allegedly without remittance to the
pension managers must also
stop.

"If they cannot account for
the one they have deducted,
they should stop further
deductions.

Our pension is our
hope and future.

After 30 or
35 years in service, what are we expected to collect if the
government is not remitting
it?"Omisore, however,
disclosed that the Chief of
Staff to the Governor, Mr
Gboyega Oyetola, had invited labour leaders in the
institutions to a meeting this
weekend to discuss the
"abnormality" in the payment
of salaries.