— Warns against favouritism

By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

ABUJA — THE Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, has told the Federal Government to release the recently approved N50 billion Earned Allowances to universities and not to the union’s.

SSANU also warned that the government should not favour any particular union in order to avoid crisis that could jeopardise industrial harmony in the nation’s ivory towers.

Recall that the Federal Government announced that it has released N50 billion Earned Allowances to be shared among the University based unions but both the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU and SSANU have denied receiving any such money from the government.

Apart from SSANU and ASUU, other unions that are expected to benefit from the largesse are the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions, NASU.

Sharing formula had always been the problem among the four unions in the past as the government was before now accused of favouring the academic staff and allocating a bigger chunk of the money to them.

Speaking in an interview in Abuja, the National President of SSANU, Comrade Mohammed Haruna Ibrahim, warned that the N50 billion Earned Allowances should not be released to any particular union but rather should be released to the universities to disbursed.

Asked whether there has been any template on how the N50 billion should be disbursed, the SSANU President, who doubles as the Chairman of Joint Action Committee, JAC (comprising SSANU and NASU), said that it’s not the business of unions to share money, rather, the universities know how to pay monies to staff.

He said: “Well, I think people should understand that as union leaders, our business with that money is to be paid, we are not in charge of coming up with any template, and as a matter of showing seriousness on the part of government, no union should be given a dime in terms of money going into … but moneys should be disbursed to universities.

“Universities are the employers of members of staff, and in each university, every member has his own schedule, and our position remains that these universities are the ones that will determine who gets what in terms of schedule, in terms of official responsibilities.

“There’s nothing new in payment of allowances to workers in the system. But if government will continue to say that we are allocating X amount to academic staff, allocating X amount to other non teaching staff, crisis will continue to brew, because that is called segregation, payment should be determined based on the personnel budget of every university.

“Those monies should be given to the universities. Once they give the universities, the universities will know who should get what because there have always been committees at the level of the universities, disbursing these amounts. So, no union should come up to say that this is what we should be given, or this is the template, that’s not our business.”

Asked whether the money has been released, Comrade Ibrahim said: “We have heard that moneys have been released, but I think for want of a better word, it should have been said that approval has been granted for its release, because when you say you have released something which means it has hit your account.

“So, we have not seen yet, but we are optimistic, because the minister (of Education) did mention and we are taking him by his words. The executive secretary of NUC (National University Commission) also confirmed that monies are available for payment, but they are yet to get to our members.”

Further asked whether the government stated as usual how the money should be disbursed, the SSANU President said that the circular sent to universities only stated that universities should feed in the NUC with data of who should get what, adding: “these universities are now collating. So, we are hopeful that once that is done, the money will be released.”