No fewer than 400 employees at the American University of Nigeria, Yola, have been laid off by the governing council of the university.
The university was founded by the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, as a development-oriented university.
The university’s Public Relations Officer, Abba Tahir, said, “For many years, we have staff population that is far higher than student numbers. There’s no institution in the world where the number of administrative staff is higher than the number of students.
“The student population is over a thousand and the staff population is far higher.
It would not be realistic for AUN to continue to anchor its administrative structure on a bloated personnel, whose role do not have significant effect on the philosophy of a development university.
“For years, the generosity of its founder has sustained its unwieldy staff population, but of late former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has taken measures to rein in some of the burgeoning cost of sustaining several of his investments with recent restructuring, where many of his business concerns have been aggregated, witnessing rationalisation of the workforce.”
He added, “Just recently, on workers day, 46 staff members of Gotel Communications, a media outfit belonging to Atiku were retrenched with the management of the corporation justifying the action as a “culmination of ongoing restructuring exercise which was initiated last year for companies under the Priam Group.”
Although Tahir said the AUN was not under the Priam Group, he noted that the lay-off of some employees of the institution became necessary because the bloated workforce could no longer sustained.