Ekiti NUJ Correspondent’s chapel honours FUOYE VC 

Ekiti NUJ Correspondent’s chapel honours FUOYE VC

Members of the Correspondent Chapel, Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ),Ekiti State Council has presented an award to the Vice-Chancellor, Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Prof. Abayomi Fasina.

The Chairman of the Correspondent Chapel, Mr Raphael Ogbonnaiye who spoke on behalf of other members while presenting the award, siad the honour is in recognition of Vice-chancellor’s excellent performance  as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Federal  Government-owned institution.

He explained that Prof. Fasina has performed admirably well by raising the bar in managing the University and promote it to one of the best  Federal University on the country.

He added that the Professor of Pedagogy  would be the first VC to be so honoured by the Correspondents’ chapel in recognition of excellence in public service in the academia.

Justifying the award,  entitled “Icon of Excellence in the Academia”, Ogbonnaiye said:” We have watched keenly your activities as the Vice-Chancellor of this University and we are fascinated by the tremendous achievements you have made.

” We noticed  a lot of silent revolution going on here since you came on board as the VC of this University. Though, we are to serve primarily as watchdog and hold public officers responsible and accountable, however, we reasoned that when somebody is doing well, we also acknowledge. We look around and we discover that you deserve this award .

Responding, the highly elated Vice-chancellor appreciated the Journalists for honoring him, promising that the recognition would ignite the passion to do more in transforming the University.

Speaking on the recent announcement of the removal of Universities from the IPPIS, saying it was the best decision from the Federal  Government which according  to him would bring more effectiveness and efficiency into the running the University system,

His words:”The advantage now is that we are now independent to decide on proper management of the system. We can  take from our IGR to supplement what we are given by the government.

“Another advantage is that we want the government to increase our salary and with this development, we can subsidize such increment with our IGR. We are currently poorly paid as lecturers in Nigerian Universities. For example, a Professor earns less than half a million Naira.

Late Nimi Briggswho was chairman of Pro-Chancellors told the government that no Professor in Nigeria should earn less than a million Naira.

In Rivers State, Governor  Wike ensured that VCs in his state earn 2.3 Mi each, while a Professor earns about N1.2 M Monthily. A Professor in public university in Nigeria earns a paltry N420, 000! . The situation has to change.

This development will save us a lot of troubles of running to Abuja to get approval for so many things we can easily handle on our own. Such things as recruitment and others.

We are having the autonomy now and we would manage our system efficiently on our own.

There is so much bureaucracy in IPPIS which give us so much headache. We have some of our staff members who haven’t collected their salary for maany months now because of that bureaucracy . We have a situation where a  former VC who went on sabbatical was denied his salaries on return for several months due to the bottlenecks of IPPIS.”

Assuring that FUOYE under his administration would continue to strive for excellence, he said: “ We have unbundled the mass communication department into a full faculty and we are going to make effort to get grant with which to fund the faculty heavily for optimal productivity.  We will have our own radio station and studio of international standard and what have you?