GOVERNOR ORTOM’S ORDER TO REOPEN BSU
By James Ibechi
Whether it is executive fiat or order that anyone chooses to term it, what you cannot deny in a Governor is that the power to act in the interest of the state at any given time is vested in him - the Executive Governor of any state.
Given that, by the Sunday order handed by the Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom to the Governing Council of the Benue State University, Makurdi, to reopen the varsity immediately, the governor must have exercised such power.
It is expected that the governing council must reopen the varsity, and perhaps no-work-no pay regime may be applied on account of some lecturers who may refuse to comply with the order. Yet, this is all a conjecture.
The order was prompted by the inability of the striking lecturers to call off their protracted ongoing industrial action after their long meeting held on Friday during which it was expected that they would call off the strike to enable the students who have been at home for over two months to return to school.
This is despite the Governor’s candid efforts to see the lecturers return to classroom by paying them two-month salary for doing nothing; this is aside placing the lecturers on first line charge in terms of salary.
What first line charge in this case has meant is, despite the economic crunch that is buffeting the state to the effect that payment of salaries of other category of government workers in the state and LG has stagnated for many months counting, the governor has ensured no dime is owed the striking lecturers. They have been preferentially paid up to date.
The governor said he has done everything humanly possible to ensure that the lecturers shift their grounds by returning to the classrooms for the sake of the future of the undergraduates.
''I have made several appeals to ASUU in BSU to consider the plight of the innocent students and call off the strike action, but to no avail. I have also paid them additional two months salaries after initially agreeing to call off the strike, yet they collected the monies and remained adamant.
The belligerent lecturers are demanding payment of their accrued academic earned allowance, among other demands, which Governor Ortom inherited from the previous administration.
Now that the governor has ordered the reopening of the university, even amidst calls by stakeholders on the lecturers to consider the interest of students and the state and end the strike to no avail, it will be seen whether the university teachers will shift ground or prepared for a full blown fight with the government.
In all of such battle, it is the students who are at the receiving end.
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