SSANU’s industrial action

After a relative period of calm, Nigerian universities are on the boil again. This time around, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has decided to down tools.

The industrial action can be viewed as a response to a circular which emanated from the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission. The specifics of the circular revolve around the fact that the Federal Government would no longer pay the salaries and allowances of teachers in the various staff schools in the Federal Government-owned universities. The implication of this is that the teachers were no longer members of staff of the various universities.

Understandably SSANU, which partly draws its membership from the teachers, has kicked and voiced out in clear terms that this unilateral action on the part of the Federal Government would not stand. On our own part, we continue to be amazed by these developments.

It should be appreciated that there is a subsisting agreement between the Federal Government and SSANU as well as other unions in the university as regards this issue. Among other things, the agreement provided that the Federal Government would be responsible for the capital and recurrent expenditures in the staff schools of our various universities across the country. It will be recalled here that the agreement itself was not a cake-walk. It was forged in the context of a stormy face-off between the Federal Government and the various unions. But now and in one fell swoop, one of the parties to the agreement has decided to renege on same.

Needless to stress, there is something untoward and reprehensible about this unilateral posture on the part of the government. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of the issue centres around a human condition in which, even as the rest of the country is still savouring the joys and bliss of the post-festive season, hundreds of workers in the various staff schools have suddenly found themselves on the way to the job market.

It is instructive to point out here that SSANU has made the compelling and unassailable point that other organisations with staff schools have been exempted from this punitive directive as dished out by the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission. The references here are the staff schools which continue to operate in contexts like the Police Force, Army, Navy, Air Force and what-have-you. So, the relevant question here is: why have the university staff schools been singled out for this treatment?

In our view, the directive to the university authorities on this issue smacks of double standards and discrimination. It is against this background that we welcome the current meeting of minds between the Federal Ministry of Education and the SSANU.

One way out of the present problems is for the staff schools to be converted into laboratories for the Faculties of Education in the various universities. In this way, the Federal Ministry of Education can always justify the expenditure on the staff schools. Another way is to keep intact the existing contracts of the existing teachers such that only newly recruited ones will be subjected to the new conditions envisaged by the Federal Government. But again, if the Federal Government does not want to be accused of bias, why not withdraw funding and responsibility from all the other staff schools in the other federal agencies and institutions.

We are of the conviction that all of these and other creative options should be explored with a view to ensuring that the industrial action by SSANU is called off soonest. Sanity and stability must be allowed to prevail in our universities in this new year.

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