By Abimbola Abatta
Part-time lecturers at Wesley University, Ondo State, have bemoaned months-long delay in the payment of their salaries.
Musa Yisa (not real name), who worked at the school as a part-time lecturer, told FIJ that Wesley University owed him and others for two semesters from 2022.
FIJ understands that the affected lecturers have been complaining bitterly on their WhatsApp group over the school management’s failure to pay them for close to a year.
FIJ learned that the lecturers were engaged by Yusuff Adesina, the coordinator of the university’s part-time programme, who signed their offer letters.
“I work at the institution as a part-time lecturer. The university does not renew our contracts every semester. If they need your services, they just give you courses to teach,” Yisa revealed to FIJ.
“The agreement was that the school would pay N20,000 per the first two courses we take in a semester. When the courses are more than two, the school will pay N10,000 for the third one.
“If I take three courses in a semester, the school will pay N20,000 for course one, another N20,000 for course two and N10,000 for course three,” he added.
Yisa’s explanation means that Wesley University will pay him N50,000 if he teaches three courses in a semester.
For lecturers like Yisa, who taught three courses for two semesters – one in 2021/2022 academic session and the other in the 2022/2023 academic session – the school has refused to pay them.
The last time the school engaged these lecturers for part-time classes was from October 2022 to January 2023 in the 2022/2023 academic session.
The lecturers who worked before and during this semester have only been getting excuses from the management regarding their payments.
“The school is owing me N100,000, which is the payment for two semesters. The school is even owing some lecturers more than that because they took more than three courses,” said Yisa.
According to Yisa, the issue has got so worse that the school no longer engages him and other part-time lecturers in teaching part-time students.
“They now use regular lecturers to teach the students. But even the regular lecturers themselves are being owed large sums by the institution. And it’s not as if the students don’t pay their school fees,” Yisa lamented.
He mentioned that the payment would have gone a long way in covering his children’s tuitions.
“We have resorted to a lot of strategies to address the situation from one-on-one appeal to raising the issue on the WhatsApp group. All to no avail,” he said.
“The top management staff have never met with us. We have not been given the opportunity to meet with the VC, and people have been complaining for long.
“It’s only one Mr Yusuf, one of their foot soldiers, who happened to be the coordinator of the part-time project, who has been engaging us on WhatsApp.”
‘THE MANAGEMENT HAS NOT FORGOTTEN’
In a screenshot sighted by FIJ, Yusuff told the affected lecturers on Wednesday to exercise more patience as the management had not forgotten their payment.
Yusuff’s message was a response to a complaint from one of the affected lecturers, who voiced his dissatisfaction with the delayed payment.
When FIJ called Yusuf on Thursday, he said he was not in the capacity to comment on the delayed payment.
“Did they (the affected lecturers) employ you that you should negotiate on their behalf or what? I am not in the capacity to comment. I am not the public relations officer of the school,” he told FIJ.
FIJ also tried to contact Queen Oyidu Obeka, the vice chancellor’s wife who also serves as the director of the part-time programme, but she did not answer her calls.
A message was subsequently sent to her, but no response had been received at press time.
Culled from FIJ
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