Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Education, Prof Sola Adeyeye, has advised the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) against the rigid compensation system it is demanding from the Federal Government.
Professor Adeyeye, a professor of Molecular Biology, who was a lecturer for about 40 years said ASUU members were not abreast of international best practices in lecturer compensation.
Whilst speaking to journalists in Abuja on Monday, Adeyeye said American universities did not apply a uniform system of compensation to lecturers working in different institutions and that each university had its own unique and flexible system.
He faulted the comments of the chairman of the University of Ibadan chapter of ASUU, Dr. Segun Ajiboye, who had rubbished some of Senator Adeyeye’s contributions on the ASUU strike.
Ajiboye had said, “Having enjoyed good salary and benefits as a lecturer abroad, the senator (Adeyeye) was indifferent to the rot in the Nigerian universities.”
But Adeyeye, said, “I was bemused by the reference by ASUU spokesman, Dr. Ajiboye, to my enjoyment of Duquesne University’s reputed Flex Benefits for its members of academic and non-academic staff while denying similar benefits to ASUU members.
“First, in most instances, as its very name suggests, the Flex Benefits Programme at Duquesne was flexible. It was also contributory. The university simply matched up to a predetermined ratio, whatever amount had been contributed by the staff.”
Adeyeye further explained that there were five universities within a four-mile radius of Duquesne University and each university had a unique compensation system with a different structure for salaries, allowance and benefits.
He said this was against the local situation where “ASUU wanted a retention of the rigid system whereby a Professor of Engineering at the University of Lagos enjoyed similar salary structure as a Professor of Religious Study at Ibadan and a Professor of History at Ile-Ife.”
Responding to claims by Ajiboye that he was out of touch with the Nigerian system as his own children schooled abroad. Adeyeye said, “Dr. Ajiboye erroneously, and perhaps deliberately and mischievously, sneered that as a senator, I sent my own children to be educated in the USA. All my children had either graduated or had been admitted into a university between September, 1980, when I left Nigeria and 2002, when I finally returned to the country.”