Chairman of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, University of Ilorin chapter, Olushola Falowo, speaks to DANIEL AYANTOYE on the union’s strike and disagreement with the Federal Government
Your union recently ended a seven-day warning strike. Don’t you think this would have affected academic activities and the students?
There is no way it would not have affected academic activities and that was why SSANU as a union was reluctant to go on strike. I am very sure that you must have been following events from last month. For more than a month now, the national leadership of SSANU has been in the media, trying to avert the strike. You can imagine that the salary that we are paid currently was last reviewed in 2009. And when that 2009 agreement was concluded, they said the agreement would be reviewed every three years. You can now see how many three years are between 2009 and 2024.
Now, if you compare the value of money, how much was transportation fare in 2009 and how much is it now? How much was a bag of rice in 2009 and how much is it now? If you remember very well, in 2009, a bag of rice was N6,000. Even before 2009, it was N4,000. But I can remember that I bought it for N6,000. That same bag is over N90,000 now. How do you expect somebody who is on this kind of salary to cope in this period? You know how much the pump price of petrol was in 2009 and how much it has become now. So, this is one reason why we said the government of Nigeria should be more sensitive to the welfare of workers. It is the insensitivity of the Nigerian government that led us to the level that we are today.