By Godwin Agia, Jalingo
The Taraba State Governor, Dr Agbu Kefas has approved additional N300 million to the Taraba State University Jalingo.
The State Commissioner for Tertiary Education, Dr Mike Dio Jen made the position know while interacting with newsmen in Jalingo on Monday.
According to the Commissioner, Dr. Agbu noted that the additional N300 million is in addition to the previous N200 million he earlier approved last week totaling N500 million and pleaded with Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) to call off strike to enable the institution resume her activities.
Dr. Mike explained that, “The governor inherited the salaries of about two years, Earned Academic Allowance and Administrative Allowance for the non-academy staff amounting to over four billions (4,000,000,000).
“On the 12/3/2026, the governor after meeting with the union leaders approved the sum of over N3billion and immediately gave approval for N200,000,000 be released to them, and assured ASUU that starting from April N100,000,000 monthly will be releasing to settle the backlog of the demands of this union and today he approved additional N300,000,000 upfront that will covered the month of April, May and June respectively.
“In assumption of office he assured them that he was going to pay and the government paid over one billion N1,000,000,000 for now, and we entered in to an agreement with them that contains other demands that bother the welfare of Academy and non-academy staff ranging from the issue of lack of promotion for academy staff, nonpayment of salary and their promotion areas.
“Immediately we came on board we swung into action, there were Seven demands brought by the academy union and the non-academic staff union, and all the seven demands were discussed and solved, five of them were completely settled, then the two major demands that were left were the issue of pension and gratuities, payment of backlog of salary arrears and the EAA and AA. When the governor came in, he proved the point of agreement where two hundreds million was released to them, and there was an agreement that the government will release the sum of N50 million monthly until such a time that the entire thing will be settled.
“Be it as it may, the situation we have in this country the income or resources at the disposal of the government is not consistent, it fluctuates, even what we get from the federal account is not consistent and there are competing demands, look at insecurity, it is consuming the resources we have in the State.
“When the government slashed the school fees by 50% which is the main revenue, the government decided to take over the entire payment of salaries which was Three hundred and Eight million (308,000,000) per month to Six hundreds and thirty seven million, eighteen thousand four hundreds and fourthy four naira, ninety seven Kobo per month because of the implementation of the new minimum wage which is the highest paid institution in the northern Nigeria,” he said.
Highlighting some of the governor’s achievements in the university, Dio noted that Dr Agbu Kefas had earlier spent over N2b for the renovation of the hostels and N400,000,000 was expended for the building of the new hostel in the institution also gave approval of over N1.43b be released for the accreditation of courses in the six higher institutions in the state.
