SSANU threatens strike, warns FG against full implementation of Needs Report

THE Senior Staff Association of the Nigerian Universities
(SSANU),Western Zone, yesterday threatened to down tools if the
Federal Government decides to fully implement the Needs Assessment
Report which it described as poisonous to Non-Academic Staff in
universities.
Addressing newsmen on the issues raised by the Prof. Yakubu led Needs
Assessment Committee at a lecture held at the University of Benin
(UNIBEN), the National Vice President and chairman Western Zone, of
the SSANU, Comrade Alfred Jimoh, said the association had earlier
faulted the composition of the Needs committee set up by the Federal
Government to identify the gaps in the university system.
He said the committee was not only "lopsided but one sided because it
excluded both students and the non-teaching staff in the system and
compromise only members of the Academic Staff and the then incumbent
President of ASUU. "The report of the committee is laced with some
poisonous and odious recommendations against the Non teaching staff,
which we call satanic verses of Needs Assessment Report".
He said therefore that "one cannot but wonder how government could
expect an objective and dispassionate report from such a warped and
highly skewed committee. True to type and as anticipated by the Non
teaching staff of Nigerian universities, the committee came out with a
voluminous document full of graphics, illustrations and pictorials
which range from truth to half truth and altar false hood.
"We the Non teaching staff Unions particularly the Western zone of the
SSANU have at every fora given warning to the Federal Government to
discard the offensive parts of the Needs report which seek to
determine the job Non teaching staff of Nigerian universities and halt
their human development through training and retraining" he said. He
further warned that the full implementation of the report would be
resisted through industrial action.