The Provost of Federal College of Education, Okene, Kogi State, Dr Umar Hassan has disclosed that the College is owing the staff over 256 million peculiar allowances between 2017 and 2019.
Hassan, made this known when the Governing Council of the College led by its Chairman, Engineer Saad Abdullahi paid a courtesy visit to the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu on Thursday in Abuja.
While disclosing the staff were already being agitated, the Provost appealed to the Minister to approve a special financial intervention to enable the College pay the workers the outstanding allowances and arrears of new salary scale.
He lamented that the population of students was fast drying up because of depreciation in student intake, which he said was peculiar to most Colleges of Education and Polytechnics in the country because majority of Nigerians prefer to study in universities.
He said: “The College is in default of the payment of peculiar allowances for a period running into 23 months, 2017 and 2018 amounting N148, 203, 748.58.
“For the year 2019, the College has submitted the financial implication amounting N108,000,000 with the hope that it would be captured in the 2019 Appropriation but regrettably, it was not.
“The College burden of financial commitments has been further strained by the agitation of our former staff for the payment of five months arrears of the salary scale introduced just before there were severed from the service of the College.
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“Much as the College would have been willing to effectively meet these financial commitments at least for the sake of peace and industrial harmony which had been enjoyed over the years, we regret to state that our internally generated revenue for the past few years could not, in fact cannot still support the rather huge amount involved,” he said.
The Provost noted the precarious financial situation of the College was further compounded by irregular releases of overhead grants from the Federal Government, adding that right now there is festering tension in the College over demands by staff for the settlement of promotion arrears for years 2015 and 2016 totaling N33, 672,157.56.
The Minister in his response, said government would look into the request but asked the Provost write officially to the Ministry highlighting key areas requiring intervention, saying the current administration attaches great importance to the teaching profession and would all it could to improve the quality of teaching and learning in Colleges of Education across the country.
Chairman, Governing Council of the College, Engr Saad Abdullahi, said the Council has made tremendous effort to improve the lot of College, saying, however, that the challenges on ground were overwhelming and required the intervention of the Federal Government that owns the institution.