Sack of ABU Lecturers: Haruna Haruspice tackles Dr. Abdelghaffar over IPPIS
The management of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, yesterday, terminated the appointment of all academic staff on contract appointment at the university. The termination of appointment which takes effect from June 15th, 2020 also includes all visiting lecturers at the university.
No reason was given for the action. But according to sources in the institution, the sack is connected to the lingering issues between the federal government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) over the Integrated payroll personnel information system – IPPIS
As expected, the action by the management of ABU has added more energy to the already tensed debate about IPPIS. Two of our own, Dr. Abdelghaffar Amoka, an Abusite and lecturer in the department of physics and Abdullahi Haruna Haruspice also an Abusite, Journalist, and Publisher, yesterday locked horns in fierce verbal combat on the issue.
ALSO READ: IPPIS – ABU Sacks all contract and Visiting Lecturers
The fierce but insightful verbal battle started when Haruspice made a post in support of IPPIS and the sack of the part-time ABU lectures. Enjoy the debate below:
ABDULLAHI O. HARUNA HARUSPICE – You cannot teach ICT and frown at a software
You have the money to hire part-time lecturers yet can’t convert them to full teaching staff! A department graduates 100 students and then cry of no staff to hire, I don’t understand. In my class, I had 10 persons qualified to be Graduate Assistants but only one person was retained – the rest were left to the streets as they couldn’t benefit from ‘Namu -Namu’ arrangement.
No one should confuse us with this IPPIS imbroglio, you can hire people provided they are federally characterised and enrolled in the IPPIS. You cannot teach ICT and frown at a software that ensures a system knows the number of its employees, how much it pays them and the rest.
Build-in all the peculiarities into the IPPIS and allow the universities to run, I still don’t understand how the implementation of the IPPIS will affect quality of education.
Open up the university space, get people employed, revolve your Internally Generated Revenue and run an open and transparent system instead of inundating us with the apocalypse of a collapsed university because accountability was called for.
The musing master was just Frankly musing
But Dr Abdelghaffar Amoka disagrees. Below is how he sees the whole IPPIS Bruhaha and his reply to Abdullahi Haruna Haruspice… A reply that broke the camels back.
DR. ABDELGHAFFAR AMOKA: Personal answers to some simple questions on the trending appointment termination internal circular from ABU management….
Question: You have the money to hire part-time lecturers yet can’t convert them to full teaching staff!
Answer: The circular was to Lecturers on Contract, visiting, month-to-month payment, and not part-time. They are temporary staff and not part-time staff. These categories of Scholars who are retired Professors, visiting Professors to Senior Lecturers from other universities cannot be employed as permanent staff but their services are needed by the concerned departments.
Question: A department graduates 100 students and then cry of no staff to hire, I don’t understand. In my class, I had 10 persons qualified to be Graduate Assistants but only one person was retained – the rest were left to the streets as they couldn’t benefit from ‘Namu -Namu’ arrangement.
ANSWER: From NUC guidelines to the universities, every academic rank has its percentage and you cannot populate a department with GAs that are not even qualified to teach till they obtain their MSc to become Assistant Lecturer, according to NUC guidelines.
If the 10 graduates were employed and the top ranks are weak, can they do the job of a Senior Lecturer? Who will train the GAs to get their MSc and PhD? Who will do the teaching and students project supervision job before the GAs attained the level to perform those functions?
QUESTION: Build-in all the peculiarities into the IPPIS and allow the universities to run
ANSWER: Retaining retired intellectuals that are still resourceful to the university and seeking for help from Professors in other universities to build your system are part of the peculiarities of the university as practiced worldwide. Is that captured in the IPPIS?
QUESTION: I still don’t understand how the implementation of the IPPIS will affect quality of education.
ANSWER: The whole idea of visiting Lecturers and having some retired Professors on contract is a temporary measure to fill the gap of the non availability of Academics at Senior cadre as you train the younger academics to get to that level.
And that is only possible with the financial autonomy of the university where the management can use their discretion to effectively utilize the available resources to keep the system working with temporary staff pending the availability of enough tenure Lecturers at senior cadre. Now that the university has been stripped off the financial autonomy and handed over to the OAGF, that flexibility is no more there. It is either tenure staff or nothing.
ALSO READ: Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik – The Lecturer Trying to Revive High Voltage research in ABU
That means you can’t start a new program and employ the services of temporary academics while you train the younger academics to take over unless you can snatch senior academics from other universities which could be very difficult. And the existing program that lack that required tenure senior academics are at risk of next accreditation exercise. Do you think that will not affect the system?
QUESTION: Open up the university space, get people employed
ANSWER: The engagement of contract and visiting Professors to Senior Lecturers never stopped employment in the university. They are engaged because of their value to the system. Mass Com, ABU has such a celebrated Professor that is retired but still engaged.
Among the Academics that I worked within the UK during my PhD was a retired Emeritus Professor, Len Dissado (Google his name) that was among my 4 guides. I am very proud to have Coauthored a published paper with him. It was a rare privilege. That is one of my best papers using the Dissado-Hill (QDC) model.
The Professor of Engineering with a PhD in Chemistry was retired as at 2009 when I got to Leicester. He was about 70 when I left in 2012. I learn a lot from him. I will remain pleased with the University of Leicester for retaining the retired but not tired Professor and a Dielectrician that I had a privilege to learn from.
In the university, we don’t just discard intellectuals that are still resourceful to the university. That is part of the peculiarities of the university that is beyond the realm of understanding of Buhari, Amodu Maikanti and the bunch of ignoramus following them.
The trouble is that we have graduates that passed through the university but are ignorant of the university system. Lazy to read but expert analysts on issues they know little or nothing about. We possibly need to start making a thinking cap for some people as they are graduating.
And Dr Abdelghaffar Amoka submitted his case.
Although Abdullahi O. Haruna Haruspice, the musing master appreciates the university Don and his message… He didn’t appreciate some parts of it… Below is how his view about the messenger and his message👇
ABDULLAHI O. HARUNA HARUSPICE: He would have been more appreciated and respected if he was a bit civil.
This man responded to my post on IPPIS, very lucid argument he has presented, at least, he has educated me and my co-travellers on their own argument. He would have been more appreciated and respected if he was a bit civil in his reaction, typical of our academics, who frowns at being intellectually challenged, he went berserk almost to a childish level pouring raw insults on my person.
Secondly, a truly baked intellectual would have carved the wood of honour by at least crediting me in his response- perhaps weighed down by cowardice or sheer tomfoolery, he decided to react to a product of my thinking. If a whole lecturer would hide under the umbrella of innuendo to react to a public issue, then we have really ebbed in our intellectual voyages.
In the days before now, University lecturers set agendas and call for debates- when I remember the fruitful era of Late Bala Usman, Prof Sam Overbhare, Prof Femi Odekunle, Prof Patrick Wilmot who made intellectualism rosy, I fret on our present crop of university dons- who are edgy, rambunctious and intolerant to social issues.
This man who called himself a Don in Physics had nothing to end his beautiful nonsense – cowardly rejoinder but chose to call me a lazy graduate! I am a lazy graduate, yet you hide in cowardly mien to respond to a piece I did not on you but on a national issue. You proud yourself a hardworking lecturer yet exert influence in innuendo.
Next time, be a man with balls by responding in reference. I am not your student that you can intimidate, I have counted years after graduation, I speak in my laziness to thousands every day, I have my own classroom where I embrace alternative views, I don’t strangulate opposing views, I create debating issues thus adding to the body of knowledge. Not everyone in the university is intelligent, years of crammed textbooks written by imperial lords can make even a dullard a university lecturer.
Dr Abdelghefar Amoka, next time you call someone lazy, ask how strong you are, PhD does not make a strong lecturer, common sense does. Meanwhile, even with your PhD crown, I am just seeing your name for the first time in the line of University lecturers, or you have been lazily sleeping without much impact?
Lastly, thank me for making you write for the first time on national issue except that you started very tragically by attacking personality instead of enriching substance.
My name is Abdullahi O. Haruna Haruspice, a proud Abusite and Macosite…
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