Delay in CONTTA implementation could crumble varsity system, trigger fresh industrial crisis — SSANU president

The national president of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Comrade Muhammad Haruna Ibrahim, in this interview with CHRISTIAN APPOLOS, speaks on the situation, two months after the Federal Government and the leadership of the non-teaching staff unions, signed a new agreement on June 29 following the review of the 2009 agreement.

Two months after the Federal Government and the non-teaching staff unions signed the agreement, what is the current state of implementation?

The struggle of workers in our tertiary institutions, especially our public universities, has been going on for 17 years, from 2009 until today. We have been in the trenches since 2009. In between, we had the Jonathan administration, then eight years of the Buhari administration, and now this government.

We struggled hard to get the government back to the table to renegotiate the 2009 agreement. The agreement itself was a document signed with the government, with a provision that after three years, it would be subject to review. It covered conditions of service and other associated issues relating to university governance and funding. Part of it dealt with university autonomy and non-interference by the core civil service. Those were some of the issues we reviewed in the agreement you have been hearing about.

Then, we came to the financial aspect. The financials have to do with salaries, allowances and other associated payments. The government deliberately said that it would not discuss salary review because it was considering a general review of salaries for all civil servants and other public servants, of which university workers are also part. So it focused on improving the allowances and making available allowances specific to teaching and non-teaching staff. That of non-teaching staff is called CONTTA.

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So, what exactly is CONTTA?

CONTTA means Consolidated Non-Teaching Staff Allowance. It is for non-teaching staff. The government agreed to review it after 17 years of struggle. So, CONTTA was reviewed upward by 35 percent. meaning that whatever you are receiving today, if it is N100, there is a 35 percent increase on that N100.

The increase is also meant to cater for data subscriptions, membership of professional bodies and other things we do, including attendance at conferences, seminars and presentations, so that workers will no longer have to take these expenses from their salaries.

In addition to that, there are some specific allowances such as responsibility allowance, excess workload allowance and hazard allowance. But these are not for everybody. They are paid to specific categories of staff. For example, responsibility allowance is only paid to those heading departments, divisions, units and sections. It is not for every staff member.

Then, there is the excess workload allowance. This is for officers on Levels 9 to 12, who have to do more work beyond the regulated hours or beyond the quantum of work they are expected to do. The rate is N2,500 per hour, up to a maximum of 52 hours in a month, for senior staff. For those on Level 13 and above, the rate is N3,500 per hour. Those are  the things the government reviewed.  It was a very tough job done under the leadership of distinguished Nigerians. We got the agreement signed on June 29. We thanked the government and everybody was happy. A lot of people had been waiting for this. We lost so many members in the course of this struggle. Some could not live to see the outcome because they died from ill health and because they could not afford medication.

Two months after the agreement was signed, how far has implementation gone?

No federal university has been able to get one dime, one naira for the implementation. Because of this, the enthusiasm and celebration have died down. People’s morale is dampened. People are not happy. So, this is where we are: agreement signed, but payment has yet to start. Implementation has yet to start. No money has been released.

This is coupled with the non-remittance of pension contributions. They deduct your money and then, the money is not remitted to the PFAs.

The new law now permits you to take 25 percent from your PFA when you retire, but when you get there and they tell you that the government has not remitted the money in the last one or two years, where is the money going?

With government revenues reportedly increasing, what, in your view, is responsible for the delay in releasing funds for implementation?

What is happening in Nigeria today, especially with regards to funding of our universities, is a case of the more you see, the less you understand. We read in the newspapers and see on television how the government keeps saying that so much revenue is being received. We also see governors celebrating the President and the Federal Government for tripling or quadrupling their allocations. And you can see that in the states because every state is now competing over flyovers. That seems to be the thing now.

But for us working in the Federal Civil Service and those working in our universities, we have not seen that. It is yet to come. So, it is a case of: who do you believe?

Let me shock you. The capital budget of our federal institutions in the last three years is nothing to write about. The releases in 2024, 2025 and now 2026 have been very poor. In 2024 or 2025, only 30 percent was approved, and it was only 30 percent of that 30 percent that was released. All the projects in our institutions are suspended. Contractors are not paid, and universities are finding it extremely difficult to fund their activities, especially payment for electricity.

We also celebrated when this government came with the idea of solar grids for universities. For those that are lucky to have them, they are happy because a lot of burden has been taken off their heads. But how many universities have this? Less than 10, or not more than 10 universities, out of over 100 universities.

The idea of the government generating more revenue is something that is not explainable and cannot be understood by us because we don’t see the corresponding releases. A clear exam is the government approved upward review of allowances for workers in the universities, particularly non-teaching staff, but no dime has been released for implementation two months after.

As we speak, vice-chancellors are finding it extremely difficult to operate. But you know they cannot say much because they are appointees of the government. We can speak because our members deserve to know the situation. For us, if we see what is good, we will say it. If we don’t see, we will also say it.

From your engagements with the ministers and other government representatives, what are they telling you about the delay, and where exactly is the bottleneck?

No matter how a minister wants to perform, he cannot perform magic. We see the  enthusiasm in our Minister of Education to get the job done. Any day I call him, he picks up the phone and explains things. But, all ministers eventually run to the Minister of Finance. I will not be able to speak on his behalf, but I can tell you that there are so many approvals lying on the table of the Minister of Finance.

We have been reliably told that the Minister of Education has done his bit. In conjunction with the Budget Office, everything required to implement the CONTTA for non-teaching staff for the whole year has been calculated. But we have not seen the money till now.

As president of a union representing thousands of non-teaching staff, how are your members coping with the delay?

It is a very pathetic situation. My members cry to the leadership ear all the time. They call on phone to know what is happening, they lament, and their morale is very dampened. The most disheartening part of this situation is that we are losing so many members due to their inability to access medical care, their inability to provide good food for their families and their inability to even afford transportation to work five days a week. So many of our people have parked their cars because they cannot afford to fuel them. You cannot fill your tank with N100,000 and use it for one week, and it is finished. When you calculate it over four weeks, that is N400,000 on petrol alone. Where will you get money for electricity? Where will you get money for gas to cook? Where will you get money to pay school fees?

Today in Nigeria, to treat malaria, even at primary healthcare centres, you need nothing less than N30,000 because you have to do the blood tests, get diagnosed and then get drugs for five days. That is a minimum of N30,000.

With the concerns of your members growing by the day, what is your message to President Tinubu on the implementation of the agreement?

My very sincere call to the President of this country is that he came with good intentions. He has shown that he is willing to improve the lives of workers. He approved the minimum wage review, which is now also due for another review. He has approved allowances for the military, the police and other sectors.

And now, coming to our own constituency, universities are the lifeline of human development in this country.

If you don’t have good universities and a well-educated population, you should also expect that your economy will not thrive. People will not be able to give their best, whether in the public or private sector.

So, if universities are poorly funded and the staff are angry and hungry, you will continue to have bad products, and then the country will be in for it.

Our call to the President and his lieutenants is to prioritise expenditure. They need to prioritise expenditure. University education and education generally are priorities anywhere in the world.

If we continue to have this drop in releases in the education sector, definitely, the system will crumble. The government must  seriously prioritise expenditure, and fund our universities. Education occupies a very, very strategic place in the development of every nation.