The Federal Government and ASUU: Matters arising

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By Samuel Oluwole Ogundele
 
Nigeria should not waste more time in charting a pathway of development through the lenses of historical knowledge and its applications (wisdom). In other words, knowledge is meaningless to a large degree, until it is applied concretely to some specifics of daily human life and living. The leaders and the led can only gloss over the past at their peril. In other words, it is very unwise to be repeating the failures of history.

According to one of the most invaluable Yoruba indigenous epistemologies, a young child looks forward when he falls down, whereas an elderly person looks backward whenever the same thing happens to him. In this connection, the government is the former, with a special emphasis on the management or mismanagement of the education sector.

The Nigerian political leadership has failed woefully to understand the centrality of past experiences, to the crafting of a post-coloniality defined and ruled by justice, equity, peace, and progress. Not unexpectedly, the whole world has nothing but scorn for this country and its baboon leadership.

As a former colony of Britain, our independence remains fragile without good quality education. Over-dependence on the West and parts of Asia is an encumbrance to sustainable development.  But painfully, education is on the bottom rung of national development agendas in Nigeria.

The Nigerian leadership class continues to treat education with unimaginable contempt. Poor funding and a gross lack of infrastructural facilities coupled with poor incentives for all categories of teachers, are some of the challenges militating against education as if self-reliance matters. In 2020, only 6.7 per cent of the federal budget was allocated to the education sector.

This comatose sector of the economy has 5.6 per cent of the total federal budget in 2021. Out of the total budget of N13.08 trillion, only N742.5 billion goes to education. This was the lowest since 2010. On the other hand, the international benchmark is 15-20 per cent by UNESCO.

It is against the backdrop of the above challenges that the incessant ASUU strike actions gain their importance. ASUU, the acronym for Academic Staff Union of Universities succeeded the Nigerian Association of University Teachers (NAUT) in 1978, with 13 federal varsities. NAUT was formed in 1965 to protect among other things, the interest of university academics with respect to their welfare and conducive intellectual environment for teaching and research.

Unionism is a global phenomenon with a diverse range of challenges and sensitivities. For instance, the UK’s largest academic body called University and College Union (UCU) is saddled with the responsibility of protecting the rights of academics within the confines of justice and equity.  In the United Kingdom, there is some amount of mutuality of respect between this body (UCU) and the government in the interest of the common good.

In Nigeria, the reverse is true. ASUU and government are unhealthy rivals. They hardly see eye to eye, to the detriment of societal progress. However, ASUU was not known for incessant strike actions between 1978 and 1987. Only a few universities existed in the country during this early period.

Today, the country has 48 and 43 state and federal universities respectively. More varsities are in the pipeline largely for political reasons. High standards are not of the essence! The political class does not appreciate the fact, that sub-standard education has no leg to stand in our competitive world of modern development.

ASUU has been embarking on strike actions since 1988 as a last resort. This is because government lacks the willingness to invest adequately in human capital development. The anti-intellectual Nigerian authority remains blinded and deafened by unfettered arrogance, until a colossal disgrace knocks on its door.

This explains why the government blatantly disregards elementary labour rights of university staff on every occasion. Thus, for example, there was an agreement in 2009 to review upwards salaries of academics once in five years. The first increase was supposed to have been done in 2014.

But up to now, nothing has happened despite the fact, that the national economy is characterised by an inflationary spiral of wage and price increases. A professor’s monthly salary of approximately $3000 in 2009 has decreased in value to less than $1000 today. This absurdity of monumental proportions goes on, in a country where a senator’s monthly pay is about $60,000.

Who is the real enemy of Nigeria’s progress between ASUU and the government? The answer is blindingly obvious even to an imbecile. Nigeria is the most notorious country in Africa for unstable or epileptic academic calendar. Students and by extension, the larger society are the victims. This scenario leads to an increase in negative activities such as cybercrimes, armed robbery, prostitution, and general disenchantment for academic work. Certainly, our political leaders will soon meet their Waterloo.

The government has to begin to demonstrate a great deal of patriotism by honouring agreements with ASUU, in order not to rock the boat. ASUU as a body of intellectuals would not be blackmailed into abandoning its responsibility to the Nigerian people.  ASUU members as patriots are always ready to work with the government so as to move the country forward.

They are prepared to adjust themselves to new economic and social realities in the interest of our common heritage-Nigeria. But they would not allow themselves to be cowed by reactionary forces in authority. The government with its primordial, false sense of superiority laced with snobbery, has always been an encumbrance to fruitful negotiations or re-negotiations. Leadership without respect for the followership is tantamount to a colossal failure.

The recently suspended ASUU strike was a compelling illustration of poor governance with regard to education. After about nine months of frustrating the entire society, especially the student population, the “powerful”, untouchable government surrounded by some little minds, suspended its open defecation, by granting ASUU its requests.

The 2020 ASUU strike like others before it was avoidable if Nigeria had a responsive, patriotic leadership. Why is this government (that promised to change the system) repeating the mistakes of the past, even as the country groans with pain arising from hopelessness of crisis proportions?

Parents and students as well as other stakeholders must stop keeping quiet in the face of oppression and exploitation. Nigerians have to learn to condemn forces of evil that have polluted our political space. They have to stop castigating ASUU members whose labour rights are being trampled upon with impunity by the reactionary Nigerian state.

People who don’t see education as a serious project, have no moral basis for occupying leadership positions. Would the 2020 ASUU strike teach all of us one lesson or the other?  Would history continue to repeat itself as if we are an unthinking lot?

Prof. Ogundele is of Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan.


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