The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has put smiles on the faces of University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) undergraduates with the award of scholarships to help them pursue their education.

A member of the ASUU Board of Trustees and chairman of the National Visitation Panel, Sule-kano Abdullahi, presented the cheques of N200,000 to the two beneficiaries during the ASUU-UNN congress in Nsukka on Friday.

In a speech, Mr Abdullahi said the scholarship scheme, which commenced in 2018, was to support indigent students in Nigerian universities in pursuing their education.

He announced that after the screening by the ASUU-UNN branch, the national body approved the nomination of Ugwu Maryjane and Ugwu Promise as the beneficiaries of the UNN-ASUU scholarship scheme 2023.

Mr Abdullahi admonished them to make judicious use of the N200,000 by committing it to their education.

“I commend UNN-ASUU for giving N30,000 each as a consolation prize to the other nine students who applied,” he said.

Mr Abdullahi, a former national president of ASUU, said his panel was also in UNN to interact with the union members on their challenges.

Also, the chairman of UNN-ASUU, Oyibo Eze, thanked the national visitation team for being part of their congress and interacting with the members.

He disclosed that one of the congress’ resolutions was the union’s repeated call for the federal government to release their eight-month withheld salaries for 2022 in the interest of justice.

Mr Eze also disclosed that the congress urged UNN management to stop the ongoing review of the fifth edition of the ‘yellow book of the university’ (guidelines for promotion) that allegedly contained stringent conditions for promoting academic staff members.

“The feelers we are getting are that when this review is approved, a lecturer will publish an article that will cost a processing fee of between $2,000 and $3,000 as one of the conditions for his or her promotion.

“Some lecturers’ monthly salary is not up to $200, so where will they get this money?

“What it means is that they will not be promoted for many years,” Mr Eze said.

According to him, the union has written to the management on this issue and was told to talk to the Deans of Faculties, who are members of the University Appraisal Committee and can approve the review.

Responding on behalf of the other beneficiaries, Ms Ugwu thanked the ASUU national body and the UNN branch for assisting them in pursuing their education with the scholarship award.

(NAN)