The Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities, SSANU, yesterday directed all its members to embark on indefinite strike over the planned retrenchment of over 2,000 staff of University Unity Schools. The association said that the indefinite strike would commence on December 24, 2015 even as it described the planned retrenchment as an attempt to desecrate the sanctity of agreement.
Addressing journalists at its national secretariat, Abuja, the National President of SSANU, Comrade Samson Ugwoke lamented the untold hardship the action of government would cause it’s members. Already, the association has written to the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu urging him to order the immediate withdrawal of all letters from the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission, National Universities Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education directing Vice-Chancellors to remove personnel of the University Staff Primary Schools from the pay-tool.
It also called for the withdrawal of letters of termination of appointment issued to the University Staff Schools teachers in some universities, notably university of Ilorin, Federal University of Technology, Akure and Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto.
SSANU in the letter dated 17th December, 2015 told the minister that the association would resume its national industrial action in rejection of the directives to the Vice-Chancellors of Federal Universities by the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission to retrench over 2,000.
Ugwuoke said that the affected staff who cut across over thirty one Universities were employed by the Universities Councils for upward of decades and productively contributing their quota to the development of the Nigeria’s educational system.
He further said that the directive emanated from a circular purportedly written on behalf of the Minister of Education and signed by the Deputy Director in the ministry, Fayemi E.O. dated 21st April 2015, with an attached memorandum and report from the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission, dated 5th March, 2014 and February 2014 respectively.
According to him, the directive recommended that agencies which had been funding the personnel costs of staff primary schools in the federal budget should be advised to stop that practice with immediate effect.
It is said that a service-wide circular should be issued by the commission directing federal public establishments that had staff schools not to fund their personnel budget from the treasury.
SSANU said that as a corollary to the above directive, the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission through a circular dated 27th August, 2014, directed that personnel/teachers of schools affiliated to institutions and agencies like staff schools should on no account be included in the nominal roll of such institutions.
He also said that the letter stated that appropriate sanctions will be applied to defaulting agencies as such action will be treated as wilful introduction of ghost workers.
Ugwoke said December was given as a deadline for the removal of personnel/teachers of University staff schools from the pay-roll of government, adding that the implication of it was that the category of workers numbering over 2,000 from over thirty Universities would be thrown into the unemployment market.
While announcing the commencement of indefinite strike from Thursday, December 24, SSANU said that University Staff Schools “are integral part of the University system, established as welfare and municipal services for scholars and staff.
“Over 90 per cent of the pupils of University Staff Schools are children of staff. In fact, many of such schools were established alongside other academic components of the University, not as private enterprises or commercial ventures as it is now being viewed.
“University Staff Schools are not peculiar to Nigeria Universities alone as they are regarded as part and parcel of the municipal services that make a University ‘whole’ in its activities, sustenance and autonomy.”
SSANU told the minister that University Staff Schools and their personnel are products of legal processes, having been duly employed by the Governing Councils. They are not ghost workers clandestinely introduced into the University system as some of these people have worked for upward of twenty years as primary school teachers.
The staff schools, he explained, had specific mandate such as training and demonstration centres for the Faculty of Education at post/under graduate levels and locations for academic research by various other facilities in the university.
He said, “the implementation of this directive would be a gross violation and breach of the SSANU/FGN 2009 Agreement, which explicitly stated that the University shall bear full capital and recurrent cost of University Staff primary schools.
“It is further shocking to note that till date, the Federal Ministry of Defence still funds the capital and recurrent costs of over one Hundred Army Children Schools, Command Children Schools, Navy Primary Schools and Airforce Schools; while the Ministry of Police Affairs still funds its Police Children Schools, all from the Federal Treasury.
“We are surprised that an agency of Government, the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission could continue with this callous, wicked, insensitive and I’ll-intentioned agenda, despite our calls, letters, press releases and publications on the issue.
“With the advent of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, we had written series of public and confidential letters on same with no positive response.”
