15th December, 2022
By Joan Nwagwu
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has said it would not rest on its oars until the federal government pays their members for the four months they were on strike..
Mr Mohammed Ibrahim, SSANU President said this at the 42nd National Executive Council, (NEC), meeting of SSANU held in Calabar on Wednesday.
Ibrahim said the payment of the four months’ salary was imperative as non-teaching staff in the universities were passing through hardship.
According to him, there are high rate of inflation in the country and this has worsened the difficulty Nigerians are passing through.
“On the backlog of salaries as it affects federal university workers we have been short changed because when the law says for you to embark on any strike, you need to follow the due process.
“You are fully aware that our strike followed the due process because it was just a resumption of strike. We wrote to the government and notified them but there was a communication breakdown and that is why our strike was declared.
“Therefore, it is not our fault that we went on strike and there should be no reason why our salaries should be stopped, because we did not go on strike because we wanted to. But rather, there was a breakdown of communication and negotiation between us and the Federal Government.”
He added that the leadership of this union was leaving nothing to chance, adding that ”I want to correct this misconception that SSANU leadership has given up the struggle for the retrieval of those four months.
“It is our entitlement, it is our salaries and we cannot leave it to anybody, ’’ he said.
The SSANU president said that government was yet to re-negotiate the FGN/SSANU negotiation and could best describe as stagnated and stamped.
“In the last six months, there wasn’t any communication between the leadership and the government representatives, this is not good.
“That renegotiation ought to have been concluded way back and we would have known where we stand 12 years after signing the 2009 Agreement, we are still struggling with implementation.
“Very few parts of it have been implemented even when they are implemented, they are implemented haphazardly, ’he said.
On fuel scarcity and hike, he called on the government to do the needful.
He said the government should as a matter of urgency, reverse the situation and ensure that the Yuletide would be celebrated in peace, harmony and progress.
(NAN)