By Agboola Bayo
Ibadan
Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) yesterday alerted that vice-chancellors of public universities in the country were sabotaging the federal government efforts in resolving the three-week old strike embarked upon by members of the union.
Chairman of the University of Ibadan (UI) SSANU, Comrade Wale Akinremi, raised the alarm in Ibadan while addressing members of the union during their congress held in the university.
He said: “The federal government has been so far fair when we met with them for a meeting but subsequently what we say was that after the Minister of Education told us that we should let them look into the matter and will call us to suspend the strike but less than 24 hours later the Universities authority started advertising vacancy for the positions of our members. This shows that the Vice-Chancellors are not interested the peaceful industrial relations in university sector and it is very unfair to the present administration that is interested in restoring the lost glory of our education sector.”
Akinremi stressed that when the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration came on board and promised to employ 500,000 teachers, but that it was surprising that the same government could now be planning plan to sack 2,000 workers.
“What we are particularly interested in is the future of the Nigeria child and the primary education of the Nigerian child. We do not want government to do what will affect the primary education of the Nigeria child. If the government is expending a large amount of money on education in the 2016 budget, then why should they be planning to sack some workers in the university.”
The SSANU added that “everybody knows that education is a social responsibility and it is not a revenue generation for the government, and if the government is arguing that primary schools should be privatised.”
