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The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, UNIBEN branch, has reacted to a memo from the management of the university requesting its members who wish to receive their September 2026 salary while awaiting the release of the allowance component by the Federal Government to approach the Salaries and Wages Division of the Bursary Department of the university and indicate their willingness to receive their salaries not later than today, Friday 2 September 2026.
The university ASUU chairman and secretary, Dr Enaruna Edosa and Lucky Aimiyekagbon respectively, in a statement addressed to ASUU members titled “Re: payment of September salary”, described the university’s memo as a “provocative, divisive and mischievous memo” and “a flagrant affront to the resolution of ASUU-UNIBEN at its meeting of 29 September 2026”.
The union said the memo is calculated to intimidate and coerce its members into formally accepting the balkanisation and fractionalisation of their duly earned emoluments.
“Approaching the Bursary Department to indicate a willingness to accept the payment of your emoluments in bits and pieces amounts to personally signing onto enslavement and poverty.”
The union warned members against accepting the university’s offer, saying if they do they would have inadvertently granted the university perpetual leave to tamper with their emoluments at will.
“The statement that salary is personal to each staff is wrongly contextualised, and therefore false and misleading, as the salaries of ASUU members are a product of collective bargaining.”
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“The action of the University Administration is a gross and blatant violation of the ILO Convention No. 98 (Article 2) that strictly bars employers’ interference in the administration and operation of trade unions. Bypassing the union to strike individual deals with our members is a calculated attempt to weaken the union’s collective bargaining power.”
“It is an insult to your personal dignity, humanity, and integrity to submit yourself to the humiliation of going to the Bursary to sign to collect a fraction of your emoluments after doing a full month’s work.”
“For the reasons clearly articulated above, the leadership of the branch directs all members of ASUU-UNIBEN to resist falling into the trap of the University of Benin Administration to subject them to perpetual servitude.”
“Note, for the avoidance of doubt, that most federal universities including Bayero University Kano, University of Ilorin, Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun, University of Jos, Federal University, Otuoke, Federal University of Technology, Akure, University of Port Harcourt, University of Lagos, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, and Federal University, Kebbi have paid September 2026 emoluments in full (that is inclusive of CONUASS, CATA, PA, and EAA); and we cannot comprehend why UNIBEN will not be in the category of these welfarist universities.”
“We shall get our full emoluments duly when we stand together,” the union assured and urged its members to stay away from the Bursary Department, adding “United we stand, divided we beg!”
