UniAbuja senior lecturers union elect officers, ending 12-year-old leadership dispute

CYRIL MBAH, Abuja

The University of Abuja chapter of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has successfully ended the twelve-year-old leadership dispute which tore the union apart with the election of a new executive to pilot the affairs of SSANU for four years.

The election was held at the Faculty of Agriculture, at the University of Abuja main campus under the supervision of security personnel, including soldiers and operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS).

The election produced officers across ethnic and religious divides and was adjudged the best election within the union in recent times.

Those who emerged as the new executive members included Comrade Nurudeen Yusuf who polled 177 votes out of 537 accredited voters to defeat three other contestants. 

Comrade Hassan Shalangwa came second with 106 votes followed by Alli Abubakar, who got 57 votes while the fourth chairmanship contestant, Comrade Yusuf Sikiru Ademola got only seventeen votes.

Other elected officials are Rita Ikiremo as vice chairman, Andy Ahigbe as secretary, Mohammed Sani El’Yacoob as the Public Relations Officer, Regina Nwokedi as the Trustee and Gloria China, who emerged as the Women Leader.

In his acceptance speech after the election, which lasted for six hours and was supervised by top national SSANU officials, Yusuf Nurudeen urged members to put past agitations and grievances behind them and work with the new executive to move the union forward. 

Nurudeen promised to operate an open-door policy and urged members with progressive ideas on how to improve service delivery and the proper management of the affairs of the union to come forward with such plans to be incorporated into the blueprint of the new executive.

Speaking with newsmen later, the new chairman thanked members for electing the executive body and promised that transparency, openness and quality service delivery will be experienced by members of the union in the next four years.

He appealed to those who contested the chairmanship position to team up with the new executive to move the union forward, adding that it was SSANU that won the election and not any individual.