Abia State University, Uturu, has suspended a professor in its Department of Economics over social media comments concerning the welfare, salaries and working conditions of academic staff at the institution.
The university announced the suspension of Professor Nnamdi Chinwendu Nwaeze in a statement issued on Thursday by the Deputy Registrar and Public Relations Officer, Chijioke Nwogu.
According to the institution, the action followed social media publications attributed to Nwaeze which management said were detrimental to the interests of the university and disparaging to its Visitor.
The university said it had consequently set up an investigative panel to examine the matter.
Nwaeze’s suspension, the statement added, takes immediate effect and will remain in place pending the conclusion of the panel’s investigation.
The development followed a post published by the professor on Wednesday in which he commented on the ongoing industrial action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Abia State University chapter.
In the post, Nwaeze highlighted what he described as longstanding concerns over lecturers’ pay and conditions of service at the university.
He said members of ASUU-ABSU had embarked on what the union described as a total and indefinite strike, adding that staff had previously been reluctant to speak publicly about their grievances for fear of being accused of making politically motivated statements.
He wrote, “Had any of us brought this up before now, the issue would have been dismissed as a political statement and tagged “information from the enemies of the state.”
Nwaeze further claimed that academic staff at ABSU were among the lowest-paid university lecturers in the country and alleged that the institution continued to pay lecturers based on the 2009 ASUU/FG salary structure.
He also alleged that lecturers who were promoted between 2023 and 2026 had yet to receive salaries corresponding to their new positions.
According to him, some members of staff had also gone for as long as 44 months without receiving their salaries, while outstanding arrears remained unpaid.
The professor additionally alleged that deductions made from lecturers’ salaries as union dues had not been remitted to ASUU.
He claimed that members of the academic staff had never received Earned Academic Allowances throughout the history of the university.
Nwaeze also raised concerns over cooperative deductions, alleging that the government owed about N163 million in such funds.
He questioned the wide difference between the remuneration of professors at ABSU and their counterparts in federal and other state-owned universities, claiming that professors in some other institutions earned between N1.3 million and N1.4 million monthly.
“Let me be blunt at this time. Did you know that most professors in ABSU earn less than N400k monthly?” he wrote.
To illustrate what he described as the severity of the situation, Nwaeze compared the alleged monthly earnings of ABSU professors with the income of commercial tricycle operators.
He argued that a tricycle operator making N15,000 a day could potentially earn more than a university professor.
The professor also claimed that more than 85 per cent of lecturers had stopped using their personal vehicles, while alleging that academic staff were effectively bearing part of the financial burden that should ordinarily be met by the state government.
The university’s investigative panel is expected to examine the issues surrounding the professor’s posts and determine the next course of action.
