Withheld salaries: SSANU Ends Warning Strike, To Review Situation

“We are not asking for anything outside our rights. We cannot continue this way, because after all, we too are humans, we are also parents, with bills to pay and mouths to feed,” he said.

The union leader blamed the present state of things on the government’s attitude towards the education sector.

He said that members of unions were using strike as a last resort to drive home their demands, considering the impact it normally had on the students.

“It is not that the university workers, including SSANU, like to go on strike; it is the government that always pushes us to apply that sanction. It is unfortunate for the government to take serious matters with levity.

“Members of our various unions are very critical in the running of any given university system. We should be taken seriously whenever we make demands, like our counterpart union in the same system.

“We deserve to be treated equally. There should be no preferential treatment. For government not to have paid us the withheld salaries like our sister union, ASUU, is a great disservice to us.

“I want to say that we will continue to fight against this injustice until the right thing is done,” he said.

He said that the best way to prevent incessant strikes in the entire education sector was to fund it adequately.

“If you spend well on education, you spend less fighting insecurity, hunger, poverty, and others. The government should take a cue from other climes.

“So, the panacea to ending crisis in Nigerian universities, in fact, in the entire sector, is funding and more funding,” he stated.

He noted that since the struggle by members of the various unions to get government to do the needful, many of them had lost their lives in the last one and a half years due to a lack of funds to access good healthcare.

Mohammed also decried the issue of non-autonomy in the university system, adding that the situation was creating issues for the smooth operation of the system.

He also urged government to ensure that appointment of vice chancellors and principal officers of universities, especially the federal ones, should be based solely on merit rather than through what he described as ‘godfatherism’.

The SSANU leader said that same must be applied to appointment of members of governing councils across board. (NAN)