The management and non-academic staff of the University of Ibadan, which began a three-day protest over the unpaid earned allowances, have reached an agreement in order to put an end to the protest by its union.

The agreement, which stated that the allowances should be fully paid by July ending, also stated that should the management fail to do so, the union members should commence an indefinite strike.

According to the Chairman, Senior Association of Nigerian Universities (SANU), University of Ibadan branch, the management failed to fulfil its earlier promise. “There is an item of all the 13 items in the 2009 agreement that has financial implication and we’ve asked the management to implement one of those items. There was an agreement that they were going to do it, but eventually, they faltered in June; they were able to do a bit of it. There was a break in transmission between us and the management.”

Speaking with CEOAfrica on the management decision, he said, “The management has been positive and in fairness to the Vice Chancellor, he took responsibility and promised that such is not going to happen any longer. We are sure that with our discussion and what was tabled before us, any strike action won’t happen, we are very positive about that because we just agreed that from July, everything is going to be okay.

“We will go to work on Monday and if anybody chooses to victimise you, kindly report,” he told members.  

A member of the union, Comrade Etim Malachy of the Faculty of Education, thereby moved a motion, which was on subject to correction that “since our leaders have been able to secure a mandate and that by July ending implementation is going to commence, at failure on that implementation, there should be no additional notice to the management and we should go on a total strike.”      

Samuel Ogundeko of the Department of Works and Maintenance seconded the motion that “failure to implement our earned allowance this very month of July, there shall be no signal to the management before we go on total strike.”

The chairman, SANU, however, appreciated the congress, the human right activists and the student union for support.

He warned that “if anyone doesn’t want the Vice Chancellor or the management to finish peacefully by giving him wrong advice, the consequence for such person is better imagined because it is going to be disastrous.”

Oluwafemi Mickel, a worker, said he believed in the union leaders in taking beneficial decision on behalf of the members. “I believe that if we didn’t protest, we won’t reach an agreement. So, thank God for the step we took and I hope management will dance to our tune.”