By Fawaz Balogun
Former University of Ibadan, Vice Chancellor, Professor Idowu Olayinka has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to pay all outstanding entitlement of University staff.
Professor Olayinka made this assertion on his official social media page on Thursday, August 27, 2026.
“A bank alert was received at the early hours of today 27th August for August salary. The Federal Government is commended for not delaying the payment of our entitlement. Hopefully the protracted delay witnessed in such matters up until the recent past has now been permanently laid to rest” he said.
Following his commendation, he urged the government to pay outstanding entitlement of university staff while citing the entitlement of 2022.
“The Federal Government should do the needful by paying all the outstanding entitlement of all university staff. For the records, staff are still owed for some months in 2022, including those of us who were on approved leave from the University during the period” he added.
He further stressed that many members of staff are still owed promotion arrears, some of which are dated as far back as 2011. Payment of such entitlement to all the affected staff will go a very long way in motivating staff to continue to give their best to the system.
He added that the labourer, not to talk of the knowledge workers in the Nigerian University system, deserves his wages.
“It is reported that many State Governments are still defaulting in the implementation of the recently approved CATA for academic staff in their State Universities. This is a gentle invitation to chaos and strikes in those State Universities. They deserve priority attention given improvement in the revenues accruing to states following removal of fuel subsidy since 29 May 2023”, he asserted.
The former VC further added that verified information suggests that many private Universities in the country have been losing a number of their most high quality academic staff where the conditions of service have been improved, at least marginally in the past few months.
“Most of these private Universities use the salary structure in the Federal Universities as a benchmark with some top-up as incentive. It’s not a good phenomenon if your academic staff start leaving in droves insofar as the quality and reputation of a university is as good as the quality of its academic staff”, he added.
