By William Jimoh

Officials of the Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies, SSAEC, are currently bickering over the management of the finances of the Union.

The crisis is between some members of the Union’s Trustee on one hand, and the President-General and Secretary General, on the other.

The President General, SSAEAC, Mr. Bede Opara, had alerted members of the union and the general public of the activities of some members of the Trustee. He described them as unauthorised persons trying to carry out banking transactions on behalf of the association.

According to him, contrary to agreements, some union officers had opened a personalised account meant to warehouse the two per cent deductions from the severance pay of staff of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN.

The action, he said, was discovered when the bank wrote the association on November 7, 2013, querying why the account was opened in individuals’ names rather than the association’s name.

According to him, this made the secretary-general of the association and himself to open another account with the same bank in the association’s name to negate the one opened by the trio.

This, Opara said, made the National Executive Council of the union, at its meeting on February 21, 2014, to constitute an ad-hoc disciplinary committee to investigate the allegations of the activities of the three officers.

However, addressing newsmen on the matter in Lagos, SSAEC’s National Trustee 2, Comrade Adepegba Olasunkami, explained that the contention in the Union has to do with its leader.

He said it started as a result of the Union President General’s refusal to quit unionism after he got a double promotion to become the General Manager; an action he said contradicts the convention and traditions of the association.

He said, “It has been a standing tradition of the union that any union member promoted to the level of the general manager cannot continue to be a union functionary, irrespective of the office he held.

“Conventions are fundamental in upholding the principles of such entity. These include forbidding leaders or top echelon of such entity from making any utterances or engaging in such acts that are capable of raising moral questions from members or from other interested parties.

“Without any iota of doubt, the President General is aware that in our association, this convention was applied in the case of his predecessors. Comrades GOC Ifenacho, and Ajileye, were members of the Association’s Trustees when they were promoted as assistant General Manager (Properties and Procurements) Headquarters, respectively.

“The two are celebrities even till today, especially the former, because they did not sit tight even when they had ample opportunities to do so. They stepped aside and there is no precedent in the association as far as I know that could suggest the sit-tight-ism the present President-General is scheming now.”

He added that contrary to the impression created by the President General and Secretary General that some unauthorised persons were trying to carry out banking transactions on behalf of the association, the two were the ones destroying the conventions and traditions of the union.

He said, “It is also contrary to the laid down procedures of our union for a President General to be a signatory to the association’s cheques. The association’s constitution stipulates that two out of the three trustees of the association must have assent in the union finance and not the President General.

“The issue of money and who is authorised to be the association’s signatory never came up all these years, because the association had no money, until not too long ago when the two per cent deduction from the severance pay of staff members of the defunct PHCN arose.”