Onyebuchi Ezigbo
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has urged the federal government to take urgent steps towards addressing the myriad of challenges that led to the ongoing strike by industrial unions in universities.
In his Workers Day Message, made available to THISDAY yesterday, the President of SSANU, Mohammed Haruna Ibrahim said the union members were suffering lot deprivations despite their sacrifices at work.
Both SSANU and the Non-academic Staff Union of Universities and Colleges of Education have been on strike along with ASUU over unfulfilled agreement with government.
The union said members have been denied payment of new Minimum Wage Consequential Adjustment arrears and backlog of Earned allowances in addition to other violations of their rights and privileges.
SSANU President said: “Government should take urgent steps to address the myriad of challenges that led to the ongoing strike by the unions in the universities.
“Toying with the future of our children will spell doom for our dear country. I call on government to look into the demands of all the university based unions and take urgent steps to addressing them, so that our children will go back to school.”
Ibrahim noted that this year’s Workers Day came when Nigerian workers were passing through perilous and dangerous times.
According to him, “Nigerian workers and indeed members of our great union are confronted with diverse challenges like rising spate of armed banditry, kidnappings, insurgency, economic hardship and worst of all the inability of government to keep to agreements entered into with all the University based unions in 2009.”
Ibrahim lamented that universities have been forced to shut down due to alleged insincerity of government to keep to its promises.
He regretted that the standard of education has continued to go down due to the insensitivity of government and the inability to provide conducive teaching, learning and work environment through lack of provisions of basic facilities that would make them compete favourably with their peers in other parts of the world.
“The morale of university workers are dampened by the poor pay package and the government appears to be paying lip service in funding education, ” he said.
