On Monday, May 9, 2022, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, defiantly elongated its crippling industrial action by another three months, despite pleas from Nigerians and university students.
After shutting down academic activities in public universities for over two months, the union did not bat an eye over the plight of students or the system.
On the excuse of federal government’s failure to meet its demands, ASUU plunged further into the abyss of indifference in its latest avowal to down tools till government bows to pressure.
Over the years, the union’s alleged nonchalance has been hidden in the cover of public sympathy. But its refusal to return the public’s gesture is gradually exposing its intents.
What system survives under the frequency of disruptions Nigerian universities have been subjected to in the decades that ASUU has operated as a trade union?
Like two adverse forces pulling the system from both directions till it falls apart, ASUU and the Federal Government have played their roles in the successes or damages caused the Nigerian university system. To pretend that the government exclusively bears the blame for the rot in the system is hypocritical and deceitful.
Let us clarify that this competition to make or mar the system is not deliberate but driven by interests and priorities averse to the growth and development of the system. Such interest as projected by ASUU as an excuse for prolonged industrial action, or canvassed by government as a reason to deny ASUU of its dues. Whatever justification anyone proffers for such aversive interests is also unquestionably inimical to Nigeria’s goals on quality university education.
On its official twitter account, @ASUUNGR, the union wrote, “the government should do whatever they want to do now. We are not suspending the strike.
“The union rejected federal govt’s offer yesterday to suspend the strike for 3 months in a live meeting chaired by Chief of staff to the president with Minister Ngige by his side and ASUU Chairman, Prof Osedeke with former ASUU chairman, Prof Ogunyemi by his side.”
ASUU is demanding renegotiation of conditions of service, injection of revitalisation funds, payment of earned academic allowances, implementation of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, as a platform for the payment of their salaries instead of IPPIS; stemming the proliferation of state universities, release of withheld salaries and addressing non-remittance of check-off dues of Unions.
While government has done very little to address some of these concerns, on the excuse of inadequate funds and competing demands, lecturers at the other extreme have sought to bend the will of government by punishing the system from which they derive their legitimate earnings.
However legitimate ASUU’s demands are, they are not more legitimate than the rights of Nigerian students to university education, being trampled on the excuse of a failed agreement with the Federal Government.
That being said, lecturers cannot pretend to be blind to the improvement in infrastructural development across tertiary institutions in the country in the last decade of the intervention of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, which has elicited testimonies from heads of the Institutions and independent monitors.
Stakeholders in the sector are united in the belief that the content component of intervention is what the university system requires and government is also not relenting.
It is on record that one of the scariest policies ASUU dreads is the implementation of fiscal autonomy which will withdraw government funding and allow universities to source for alternative funding. Easy money from government coffers has kept the universities perpetually reliant and lazy from thinking out of the box to fund their own projects.
If university laws are amended to grant them fiscal autonomy, it would curtail the powers of unions and confine them to individual universities. There would be no federal or state government to pester for funds.
However, lecturers dread the fiscal liability this move could bring to their universities and therefore do not discuss it. ASUU’s concept of university autonomy has been only administrative.
It is however appalling I that the institutions cannot peer-review the operations of their counterparts abroad and implement similar strategies to alternative funding. While government shares the blame for inadequate funding of the institutions, there is no law forbidding individual universities to deploy alternative funding to complement government’s efforts.
Nigeria must wean itself from the culture of activism in academic institutions as well as the tendency of government authorities to do nothing except individuals or groups engage in damaging actions to its school system.
One of the reasons Nigerian universities remain unattractive to foreign students and fair terribly in international rankings is the disruptive academic calendar through strikes, which have become an annual ritual of ASUU.
In addition to the disruption of academic calendars and the accompanying inappropriate publicity to the university system, students are left to idle and fiddle with all kinds of vices, as they channel their energies to wasteful adventures, while society waits endlessly for the fruits of its school system. As ASUU and the Federal Government heighten their impasse, students and the Nigerian society suffer at the background.
