From: Taiwo Oluwadare, Ibadan
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), University of Ibadan chapter, has condemned the suspension of Students Union activities and the closure of school by the management.
The management of the school had, on Tuesday, announced the suspension of all student union activities following a protest that resulted in the shutdown of the institution.
Speaking with journalists, on Thursday, the UI’s SSANU chairman, Comrade Wale Akinremi, said the union did not subscribe to the decision of the school management to close the school for seven weeks, saying the management need to learn to accommodate the students instead of issuing directives that can affect their academic programs.
He said: “As young as I am, am old enough to father a lot of our undergraduates in the university, meaning that some members of the management are old enough to have these students as grandchildren. And are they going to guillotine them as their grandchildren when they misbehave?” he queried.
Akinremi noted that the question asked by the SUG president is not a enough reason to ban student Union activities in the school saying the management should rather accepted their statement as childish and later correct their misconduct.
He said: “part of our responsibility is to manage the students. And the SUG president has his own responsibility to lead his people. The responsibility of management is to rather manage behavior of the SUG president without affecting the students ‘ academic programs.
“The information I had suggest that there was no violence during the students’ protest. The students are children and are bound to misbehave and we are not supposed to kill them. We should rather need to correct them against their combative statement. And the students’ anger is not even towards the school management but government who is not visible to them.
Meanwhile, the union leader commended the school management for its recent opening to discussion over the school unions’ agitations saying this has resulted to the recent improvements between the school Unions and the management.
He said: “Though there was no much improvement in providing for needs of unions’ members but the school management headed by Prof. Idowu Olayinka, the Vice Chancellor of the school, has been opened to discussions contrary to situations in the past when they were reluctant to relate with us. But now, they are ready to give answer all our questions and we hope that they will continue this way.”