By Abiose Adelaja Adams
The authorities of the Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ile – Ife in Osun State have shut down the institution and advised students to vacate the campus.

The action came after a meeting of the institution’s administration following unending protest by members of the Non Academic Staff Union, NASU.

Early on Monday morning, before the closure was announced, the two gates of the main campus of the institution had been locked, preventing human and vehicular movement in and out of the university.

According to a lecturer of Fine Arts, Segun Ajiboye, who spoke with our reporter, the strike had been long in the offing, with several warning strikes in the past few weeks.

“We know they are fighting for hazard allowance. They said it has been paid in University of Ibadan and other schools.”

The non-academic workers had raised a number of issues with the university authorities, including the non-payment of hazard allowance to workers.

In an interview with an OAU newspaper, Wole Adewunmi, the NASU chairman, said the federal government had  agreed to pay the workers since 2009 eight different allowance of which the hazard allowance is just one.

“The federal government instructed individual universities to start implementation from 2013 February, and since then our own university has never deemed it fit to even start the implementation. We have been on it since 2012. Till today, they just keep promising and promising without any fulfilment and their argument was that federal government have not released money to pay or to implement these earned allowances,” he stated.

Ajiboye continued: “Last week, they put off light and water. So the school authorities had a meeting with them and told them they don’t have money. But the NASU members insisted they money is available and they had to pay.”

The university is in the 2014/2015 harmattan semester and is at the point of preparing for exams.

Our reporter gathered that there had been no lectures in the institution since last week due to the strike action and that the school’s authorities might have sent the students home in order to buy time to resolve the crisis.