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…Demands payments of four months salary arrears, 50bn withheld earned allowances
…Seeks replacement of IPPIS
From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, (SSANU), has blamed the country’s current economic crises on bad government policies.
SSANU has also asked the federal government to pay the four months’ worth of arrears owed to its members from the last nationwide strike.
The Union further urged the government to release the sum of N50 Billion for payment of outstanding Earned Allowances to Universities and Inter-University Centres as promised.
In a communique issued following its 44th National Executive Council, NEC, SSANU stated that its members were yet to fully recover from the hardship caused by the withholding of their four months’ salaries, adding that they might never fully recover unless the government took action.
In the document which was signed by its national President, Ibrahim Muhammed, NEC in session called on the Government to as a matter of urgency, reconstitute a new Committee for the renegotiation of the SSANU/FGN 2009 Agreement as the issue is long overdue.
“SSANU has earnestly offered itself for the renegotiation process to commence and awaits the invitation of the Federal Government on the issue.” It noted.
Moreover, the Union has demanded that the Federal Government should consider merging the payment platforms developed by SSANU and NASU (U3PS) and ASUU (UTAS) since it was on record that the platforms were capable of addressing the peculiarities of the University system.
In addition, it criticized the dissolution of university governing councils, arguing that it was illegal and detrimental to the development, efficient operation, and management of universities in Nigeria because the governing councils were appointed for fixed terms in accordance with the laws in effect at the time they were gazetted.
The Union responded to the recent arbitrary removal of fuel subsidy by the federal government without accompanying palliative measures by describing the action as the height of insensitivity.
On the student loan policy, SSANU said; “SSANU is not averse to the introduction of the Student Loan to deserving students who are desirous of higher education. NEC in session however, frowns at the conditions and modalities of accessing the Loan. The conditions are too stringent for any civil servant’s child/ward to fulfill. More so, SSANU as a critical stakeholder in the university system should be involved in the management of the Scheme.
NEC therefore requests the Government to involve all staff unions in tertiary institutions in this critical exercise as stakeholders. In the same vein, the conditions for the acquisition of the Loan should be reviewed to enable interested students to access and repay the same.”
The communique further reads: “NEC in session views the monumental socio-economic upheavals in the Nigerian State as symptomatic of a failing state opposed to peace and progress.
“A country with vast potentials of human and material resources is enmeshed in unbridled corruption and massive mismanagement which undoubtedly spells doom and total collapse if nothing is urgently done.
“The country is economically prostate because of bad Government policies, high rate of unemployment fuelling dangerous insecurity challenges of kidnapping, banditry, youthful fraudulent activities, inflation, bad roads, failed medical facilities and all attendant manifestations of a dying nation.
“NEC in session therefore calls on the Government to redirect the ship of the nation by introducing sound economic measures, gag the corruption monster and provide jobs for the teeming youths to avert the total collapse of the country.”
