For three consecutive years, Nigeria’s public universities have repeatedly shut down academic activities for a period totalling one-year six-months- eight months in 2020 and eight months in 2022.
Disruptions to the country’s university calendar equalled roughly two sessions, with a huge toll on students’ enrolment and completion, as well as the efficiency of the system itself.
On February 14, 2022, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, declared a routine strike action to press home their demand for funding revitalisation of public universities and payment of its earned academic allowances, among others.
After eight months of fruitless engagements and prolonged feud with government, on October 14, ASUU suspended its eight-month-old industrial action after the Court of Appeal ordered the lecturers to return to the classroom, upholding an earlier directive by the National Industrial Court.
Both parties couldn’t find a common ground on issues purportedly intended to improve Nigerian universities. After shutting down academic activities in public universities for 8 months, the union did not bat an eye over the plight of students or the system.
While the strike took its toll on Nigerian students, ASUU on one hand, stuck to its demand for an end to the proliferation of public universities, visitation panels/release of white papers, University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, as a broad-spectrum software to stop illegality and provide an alternative payment platform in the university system and renegotiation of the 2009 agreement, among others.
On the excuse of Federal Government’s failure to meet its demands, ASUU plunged further into the abyss of indifference and displayed gross nonchalance under the cover of fighting for the system while enjoying public sympathy.
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.
As universities resume, the institutions should 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 from deploying 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.
ASUU must rethink its strategy of responding to government failure as the deployment of strike is now a tiring, nonchalant and ruthless tactic that punishes, delays and displaces hapless students for no fault of theirs.
The union must also comport itself as a negotiator rather than a combatant; willing to win some and lose some, as against the dogmatic approach adopted during its engagements with government. It should make hay while the sun shines and take its seat while the ovation is still laud. Without ambiguation, the court order mandating ASUU to return to classroom was a spank on its leadership’s failures.
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.
Government on the other hand, exhibited gross disregard for truces brokered with ASUU as pathways towards addressing the decay in universities, a disposition that smacks of insincerity and insensitivity to the plight of both lecturers, students and the system.
As proprietors of public universities, state and federal governments must be seen to take the initiative for developing the institutions and not rely on the coercion of trade unions to propel responses to the yearnings of the university community.
The half-hearted budgeting culture of the Nigerian Government to the country’s education sector must also be addressed as it is way below the 26 per cent recommended by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.
Universities and their regulatory agency must ensure compliance with extant fiscal regulations and discipline to forestall profligacy, while alternative funding must be sourced through collaborations with grant-offering agencies across the globe.
