The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities Associated Institutions, has threatened to go on a nationwide strike tomorrow, Thursday, July 4, if its members’ salaries for the last four months that the government withheld were not paid.
“The government has failed to keep its promise of paying the outstanding salaries,” stated the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) in a communiqué released following the 48th Regular National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, which was held at the University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, on June 27 and 28, 2024.
In protest of the government’s unwillingness to uphold a collective bargaining agreement that all parties voluntarily signed, university workers took industrial action in 2022, and the government ordered that their salaries be paid.
But in a statement released under the signature of Comrade Mohammed Haruna Ibrahim, the National President, SSANU expressed its profound dismay at what it called an unprecedented degree of insensitivity on the part of the government and its willful determination to destabilise the university system by implementing the divide and conquer strategy, which favours one union over another, setting labour unions on a collision course.
“While we do not begrudge the payment made to our colleagues, we expected same gesture to be extended to SSANU and NASU that legally complied with all procedures before embarking on the industrial action”, the statement stated in the communiqué.
“Despite all promises and media hypes by the Ministers of Education and Labour, including the House of Representatives to pay these arrears, government has continued to dribble SSANU, even after the mutual agreement to suspend the one-week warning strike in March this year”.
“NEC in session deliberated on the matter and unanimously approved a long drawn comprehensive industrial action after concurrence with the Joint Action Committee meeting of SSANU and NASU scheduled for Thursday 4th July, 2024, if government fails to pay the four-month salary arrears.”
Regarding the wage award’s implementation to mitigate the impact of the removal of fuel subsidies, SSANU bemoaned the federal government’s inability to continue paying the N35,000 wage award, noting that although payments have stopped for three months, the majority of states have not yet paid their members the wage award.
SSANU pleaded with the federal government to start paying the wage award and the three months’ worth of arrears right away.
Additionally, it urged state governments that have not yet begun paying the award to do so by beginning with the arrears that have accumulated since then.
Regarding the new minimum wage, SSANU pointed out that the federal government is required to determine an appropriate minimum as the matter is on the Exclusive Legislative List rather than the Concurrent List.
SSANU threatens to shut down the system alongside other labour unions if the new minimum wage was not set immediately.
Although the union welcomed the establishment of the Governing Councils of Federal Universities, it demanded that the government immediately form a new committee to renegotiate the 2009 SSANU/FGN Agreement, citing the long delayed nature of the problem.
