By Udo Akam-Alo, ABAKALIKI
The Ebonyi State University Vice Chancellor, Professor Chigozie Ogbu, Tuesday, expressed shock over the news making the rounds that he had resigned.
He spoke while briefing Newsmen in Abakaliki, insisting that he has no intention to resign.
Prof Ogbu stated that such dust was raised as a result of the deadly pandemic ravaging the globe which brought about lockdown and eventual closure of institutions, where major source of income was unavoidably affected.
The VC said, “we all woke up to the news like you heard, that the Vice Chancellor has resigned but that is absolutely false in anyway, intended or unintended.
“The Vice Chancellor has no intention to resign for any reason but let me explain to you what has led to this: you recall that either in February or March, all educational institutions were closed, the University included.
“There is nothing that necessitated anybody to think that the VC is resigning or is not happy because these are hard times for everybody, for the University and for other organizations and we all appreciate it and will do whatever we can to come out of it.
“There is no resignation of anybody here in the University, let alone the VC.”
“The major source of income in the University are the students and at the time of the closure, students were just registering; a good number had registered, a good number have not registered either.
“Because of the fee collected, we were able to continue to pay salary until the end of May and that time, we met with the staff, with the unions and everybody and explained to them the handicap because we don’t collect fees again, there is no other source of getting money to pay school fees, the state government subvents the salaries.
“It was from June, we stopped paying salary and that’s where we are.”
In line with the state government’s request for salary reduction, the Varsity Vice Chancellor said they instituted a working committee to look into it and other pressing issues of the institution while he noted that measures are being put in place to ensure that the Varsity’s contribution counts.
“When the council became aware of this, we set up a committee to see what can be done to raise fund for the University.
That committee worked with the union and other members of the Academia came up with the report which Thursday last week, was presented to the visitor to the University, the Governor of the state, Engr David Nweze Umahi.
“So on Thursday, that presentation was done by the Chairman of the Council; in that meeting, it was obvious that the Governor who had been saying that all institutions must make sacrifice in terms of reducing their wage bill, instructed that the University must go back and look at itself critically and see how they can sacrifice to reduce the salary, then know what else to help.
For the past two days, we’ve been working on our activities to see where we can reduce to be able to satisfy him to enable him give us some assistance to continue to pay salary,” he said.
