|
FG plans N180,000 varsity fees
per session - SSANU
…Directs members to embark on indefinite strike
From AMOS DUNIA, Abuja
Monday, July 20, 2009
|
•Photo:
The Sun Publishing |
|
After initial seven days warning strike action, the Senior Staff
Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has ordered its members
to embark on an indefinite action that may totally cripple activity
in the nation’s universities in protest against government’s
plan to increase students tuition fees to N180,000 per session.
Rising from an emergency National Executive meeting in Abuja at
the weekend, the association resolved to protest the anti-people
policy that is aimed at protecting and granting access to the children
of only the rich and those in position of authority in the country.
National President of SSANU, Comrade Promise Adewusi who read the
resolutions of his association’s emergency meeting, said that
it was worrisome that while minimum wage still stood at N5,000,
the government was moving to impose on the same parents a whopping
N180,000 fee per child.
According to Comrade Adewusi, “Even at the paltry N20,000
or N25,000 they pay in the federal universities, most parents can
still not conveniently and comfortably do this. If this is allowed
to happen, what that means in effect is that education will be priced
out of the reach of the children of the poor, which we do not want.
It means the ministers will continue to produce ministers, the governors
will continue to produce governors and the peasants, the labourers,
the gardeners will produce gardeners because they will not go to
school.”
The SSANU president further said; “So, we want a fair playing
field because we have been blackmailed in most times that, look,
if you want an enhanced condition of service, accept introduction
of school fees in our universities. We have always maintained this
solidarity with our students because even our children are in these
universities, because we cannot afford to send our own children
out of the country, like other government public functionaries who
hardly have any of their children in Nigerian universities.”
In this wise, Comrade Adewusi announced that the association, having
painstakingly studied the consequences of the government’s
plan, directed all of its members to resume its suspended strike
with effect from July 20, 2009 even as it also rejected the proposed
salary increase for its members but insisted on the full implementation
of the product of its collective bargaining with Federal Government.
According to Comrade Adewusi; “What this means, is that the
universities have to be shut down, because our members are the one
maintaining the services that keep the students in comfort, now
we cannot guarantee this comfort.
I think the best advice in this circumstance is for parents to reach
out to their wards and their children because we cannot guarantee
that there will be facilities that will continue to sustain them
in classes and hostels. For avoidance of any untoward thing, even
our members in the clinics, the doctors and nurses, we are withdrawing
them until government sees reason. We are withdrawing all our personnel
from the works and services, electricity, water.”
The SSANU national president also described the purported inauguration
of the minimum wage committee last week Thursday as an exercise
in futility saying that it was merely a ploy by government to buy
time like what it did to members of the association in the past,
if allowed to get away with it.
Adewusi stressed; “It will just be for the purpose of buying
time and by the time they take us on a rollercoaster and rigmarole
for the next two years, they will say gentlemen, elections are here
and a new government will be inaugurated soon, why not wait for
the new government to be the one to implement it. It is difficult
for us to trust the government with what they have done with this.”
Commenting on universities funding, Comrade Adewusi said that it
was one of the issues that arose from the 2001 agreement during
which it was agreed that government was supposed to progressively
improve funding, adding that when former President Olusegun Obasanjo
came, funding was inadequate but the administration managed to get
to 11 per cent.
|
