By Shina Abubakar, Osogbo

The Pro-Chancellor, Osun State University, Mallam Yusuf Alli, SAN, has admonished federal and state government to review, upward, salaries of lecturers and workers of universities across the country to meet realities of rising inflation.

Speaking at the 11th convocation ceremony of the university at Olagunsoye Oyinlola auditorium at the Osogbo campus, Osun state on Wednesday, the Governing Council Chairman, disclosed that various university council should be empowered to negotiate salaries and other welfare packages for their workers.

While stressing the need for University administrators to be prudent and transparent in management of resources, he added that government must also be committed to funding university education.

His words; “It is obvious that our educational system is undergoing Tsunami like changes but unfortunately negatively. It is widely known and acknowledged that funding has been a consistent challenge to the advancement of knowledge in our educational sector, this is more so in our universities, some of which are like glorified secondary schools.

“In order to address the problem of incessant strikes by various unions in the universities, it is high time the salaries of workers in the universities be reviewed upward, to meet the realities of inflation. Going forward, we should put in place a system of automatic adjustment of salaries, within an agreed time frame say between 2 to 3 years to address inflationary trends in the economy, as it happens in other places. The Councils as the Employers in the university system, should be empowered to negotiate salaries and other welfare packages for their academic and non-academic members of the staff.

“It is equally suggested that we adopt international best practices in rewarding lecturers by ensuring that those who are able to attract grants to the universities, are paid commensurate to what they are able to attract”.

Meanwhile, while emphasising the prudent nature of the university, the Vice Chancellor, Professor Clement Adebooye said the institution in the last eight months saved over N300 million in tax liability and N175 million in running cost.

Earlier the University’s Chancellor Dr Folorunso Alakija while commending the management for the resuscitation of the MBBS programme, she assured the gathering that the state-of-the-art teaching hospital her family is building for the school will be ready for use in few months time.