SSANU rejects new salary
proposal for varsity workers
By Soji-Eze Fagbemi
President, Senior Staff Association of
Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Comrade
Promise Adewusi (middle), and other
members of the association at a press
conference on the rejection of new
salary proposed for university workers
by the Federal Government’s negotiating
team, in Abuja recently. Photo:
Soji-Eze Fagbemi
The Senior Staff Association of the Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has rejected the new salary
structure proposed for university workers by the Federal Government’s negotiating team, describing it as an insult to its members and the university community.
While exonerating President Umaru Yar’Adua from what it said was a “very absurd and barbaric” salary proposal, SSANU told the Federal Government and Nigerians to hold the panel responsible for a major crisis that would follow as their meeting was deadlocked last Tuesday.
Addressing a press conference at the weekend in Abuja, SSANU President, Comrade Promise Adewusi, said the meeting between the team, led by Chief Gamaliel Onosode, was deadlocked, adding that rather than becoming a solution to the problems of the universities, the panel had become part of the problems.
According to him, the meeting was deadlocked due to the proposed salary structure which insulted the sensibility of the university registrars, bursars and other non-teaching staff and the refusal of the panel leadership to discuss other related issues affecting their members.
The SSANU president pointed out that the salary proposed by the panel was so insulting that a newly employed lecturer with a lower qualification would earn more than the university registrar and bursar, who had spent many years in the system.
Adewusi, who led SSANU at the meeting, said the association’s members had mandated him to negotiate wages and salary that are commensurate to their workload and qualifications, but regretted that the chairman of the panel had made up his mind that the non-teaching staff were second class workers and should be treated as such.
“We have totally and unequivocally rejected the proposed salary.
We equally told them that other problems relating to our jobs and positions in the university system should be discussed but Onosode refused and said except we accepted the proposed salary, other issues would not be discussed.
“We gave a 10-point agenda for negotiation, but he says unless the issue of salary was dispensed with, they would not consider other relevant issues. University is a joint enterprise but he told us we did not matter, we are peripheral. He is at the centre of it; he can make peace or worsen the situation in Nigerian universities.
We have told them and we say again here that what they are giving is not acceptable to us. We asked for the reason behind the arbitrary salary, they told us themselves that they can’t say,” he said.
Another grey area, according to Adewusi, was that all the traditional and core areas of operations where the non-teaching senior staff had always held sway, such as Students’ Affairs, Academic Planning had now been taken over by the lecturers who are removed from the classrooms because the positions had been upgraded to directorate level.
He added that there were now Deans of Students’ Affairs, even when there was no academic activities going on in the faculty.
On the next line of action, he said the national executive council of the SSANU would meet in the third week of March where a decision would be taken on whether or not to resort to strike, but he warned that “government and Nigerians should hold Onosode responsible for whatever happens, henceforth.”
Adewusi stated that equity, justice and fairness should be Chief Onoshode’s watch word, but regretted that he had become part of the problems in the university system rather than a solution.
According to him, “SSANU has been known as a peaceful union, but as at Tuesday, we have reached the end of the road, no agreement, no concrete thing and no single issue was discussed and there is no agreement that we are reconvening again.”
He said the panel and SSANU had been meeting for the past one year but had achieved nothing, regretting that the year had been a waste of time and resources.
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