THE Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has appealed to the Senate to ensure the passage of the bill on 65-year retirement age for university workers before the end of the current legislative year.President of the Union, Comrade Promise Adewusi made the call while addressing the media on the forthcoming National Delegate Conference of SSANU, where the unions new executives would be elected between 15 and 18 June, 2011 at the Ahmadu Bello University, (ABU), Zaria.Comrade Adewusi, who spoke on the challenges of the outgoing executives regretted that the Senate had refused to consider the bill and pass it despite the fact that the House of Representatives had already passed the bill.The SSANU President said: We still have some challenges and difficulties; one of these great challenges is the consummation of the agreement we signed in the year 2009 with the Federal Government, particularly the aspect that guaranteed the retirement of our people at age 65.We want to thank the House of Representatives and all our friends in government and elsewhere that have helped us to push the process and get to a stage that forced the House of Representatives to actually pass the bill but we are worried because the legislative tenure of the current legislature is coming to an end. With the passage by the House of Representatives without a corresponding concurrence by the Senate, that bill is as good as nothing.What that means in effect is that the time, material efforts and the enterprise put into place to see the bill in its present state will have to start again with a new legislature and this cannot be the wish of the teeming members of SSANU.We plead once again with those who represent us, our brothers and sisters in the Senate, to please, as they come back from their recess, quickly pass the bill because it is a one liner amendment.They should help us concur to the passage of this bill so that we will know that what is left is the assent of Mr. President and that one we can easily pursue because if he comes or another president comes, his tenure will not be time bound like that of the legislature. We will not have to start the process de novo and whoever is in place will have to sign this bill because it has been passed by the two houses.We are not going on strike because of this but we will not want a situation that will force us to go on strike. We are pleading that they do that which is needful so that the international community, the African community, the Nigerian people will know that this government is a government that respects agreement. That is the only way to show good faith.On the election of the new executives, he pointed out that the present National Executive Council was rounding off and that the new officials would be elected at the National Delegates Conference which would hold at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria from the 15th to 18th of June, 2011.
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