Nasarawa varsity owing N2B debt since 2011, says VC

Mohammed Mainoma, the Vice Chancellor Nasarawa State University Keffi says the institution has incurred more than N2 billion debts as backlog of allowances of members of staff since 2011.
The VC disclosed this on Wednesday when he received officials and members of the Nasarawa State Correspondent’s Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in his office.
According to him, the debt is as a result of the agreement entered into by the Federal and Academic Staff Union of Universities and other unions in 2009 to pay university staff their allowances.
Mainoma said: “Since 2009 that the agreement was signed, nothing was done to commence the implementation up till 2014 and even the unions did not do anything about it throughout this period.
“Throughout this period of five years, both the union, Federal Government and the various state governments did not do anything to ensure compliance of the agreement.”
Mainoma explained that the management of the university needed more than N400 million every year to pay the allowances of both the academic and non-academic staff.
He, however, explained that the state government and the management of the university were able to settle more than one billion naira of the allowances to members of staff.
The VC added that out of the one billion naira outstanding allowances, N200 million would be paid to academic staff, while N800 million would be paid to non-academic staff.
He said though the management had entered into agreement with both ASUU and other unions to pay the balance by the end of 2016, “I am appealing for extension of time due to the recession’’.
According to him, the management of the university has scheduled a meeting with the unions for Thursday to appeal to them for additional time to settle all the outstanding allowances.
Earlier, Sulieman Abubakar, the Chairman Correspondent’s Chapel said the visit was to familiarise themselves with the management and activities of the university.
Abubakar also pledged to give adequate publicity to the activities of the institution.