The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has threatened to shut down universities should government further plans to privatise staff schools, stop paying staff, or sack teachers working in staff schools attached to federal government institutions all over the country.

This was disclosed by the National President, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), western zone, Comrade Alfred Jimoh, while speaking exclusively with CEOAfrica on the outcome of the national conference held in Abuja with the union’s national exco.

The president expressed determination over the union’s plan: “We are going to give government a thorough fight over this issue. We know that they are determined and we also are determined.

“Nobody will sack our members in staff school. We have told government that the day they stop their salaries, that day, we will start shutting down universities. Salaries of our members are still government responsibility.”

The schools were established to cater for staff’s wards, while the staff educate other wards, according to Jimoh.

  “We in the university, our own staff school are peculiar; we are (impacting) knowledge, we are in the education industry and trying to produce human capital for the country. So, while doing that, should we abandon our own children? Now, the university establishment realises that while staff are taking care of other people, our own children should not suffer. So, they established staff schools, even along with the universities.

“Today, some people just woke up and realised that it is the other way round. In 2009, we went to negotiation table and the issue of staff school came up. We kicked against it and they agreed, only for somebody like R.O. Egbule from the national salaries and income, wages commission, now telling us that the agreement states that staff school is a private enterprise of the university.

“Since when has it become? When their children were going there, it was not a university enterprise, when Okonjo-Iweala was going to a UI staff school here, it was not a private enterprise, it is now that they just realised that it is a private enterprise, he said.”

 Jimoh further said that the union would not agree with the federal government’s misinterpretation of agreement.    

  “As far as the union is concerned, we are hearing what government is saying and government is also hearing what we are saying, but I can assure you that if anyone sacks anybody in staff school, the person is calling for the closure of the university nationwide," he said.

“SSANU will not agree, Non Academics Staff Union (NASU) will not agree, National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) will not agree and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will not agree.”