Assault on the academy
By
There are four issues for which the Nigerian public —at least some vocal section of it-believe University lecturers should be crucified. These are sexual harassment (of female students), sale of handouts, cultism and incessant strikes. The first part of this essay addresses first three and the second part addresses strikes. These evils, especially strikes, are said to give the Universities bad image and lower academic standards. Even the President of the nation who we expect to be circumspect and know better has joined the fray in a most unedifying way. Maybe this should not surprise us, since as we submit later in this essay these issues are mere blackmails, which are a product of the military and a self-deluding society. Events of the last few weeks have confirmed that we are still essentially under military dispensation puppeteer by deep evil forces in society.
Fortunately, Nigeria is not an island. Being part of a small global village, its affairs are the subject of international attention. It is instructive to consider a recently published United Nations report on the quality of education in Nigeria. This report has been popularised in the Nigeria media. The report acknowledged that the quality of education has declined considerably in the last 15 to 16 years. The study in summary attributed the decline to the following seven factors: inadequate financing, poorly paid and trained academic staff; insufficient and irrelevant learning materials, outdated equipment; outmoded and inflexible managerial structure; unplanned expansion of enrolment; and irrelevant curriculum. This study did not mention any of the reasons being celebrated by Nigerians and their President as the cause of falling quality of education for the simple reason that those reasons are not fundamental but merely symptomatic of the deep-seated reasons highlighted by the study. If the seven factors identified are resolved, ninety-nine percent of the causes of strikes would have been removed. But then we are a nation that specialises in ignoring leprosy while we invest enormous energy in curing ringworm.
The sexual harassment blackmail was the military’s answer to the non-acceptance by the intelligentsia of the military’s claim to right to govern. In an elaborate scheme, the University lecturers were portrayed as sexual maniacs who drop their pants before you complete the first note of martial music. It will not be correct to state there is no sexual harassment in the Universities. But if they are documented, the frequency certainly is not higher than you have in the private sector (boss and secretary), military or government offices. More significantly is that in the Universities, the frequency of detection and punishment is higher than in any other establishment. The paradox is that while the military was busy selling this blackmail to the gullible and uncritical Nigerian public, it was a worse offender in violating the nation’s daughters. All you needed to prove this was the number of military officers and their agents found in front of University girls’ hostel and number of University girls found in military helicopters when they were in power. The military seems to be saying-yes; we are entitled to it since we can pay for it! Unfortunately, the military has managed to remain in power (Generals Obasanjo, Danjuma, Abdulahi Mohammed, Gusau etc). And the public remains undiscerning, so the blackmail continues.
It is convenient for our lords and masters to ignore the real peril faced by the daughters of the nation: prostitution. There are at least two reasons why the ruling class does not want to confront this more grievous problem. They are the culprits — they own the fancy jeeps, the golf courses the fat foreign currency accounts and the foreign travels with which they lure these unfortunate girls. Secondly, they do not want to confront the reality that University girls’ prostitution is a vivid index of poverty. It pays to block everybody’s’ ears with the shout of lecturers’ harassment of their female students.
On the issue of sale of handouts, it is portrayed that all University lecturers engage in this practice. This is also a long standing item of blackmail. It is true that as a survival strategy, in the years of severe underpayment; and given the recruitment of some misfits based on ethnic and personal loyalty considerations into a proliferating and unplanned University system, the issue of sale of handouts became a problem. But it is not as pervasive as we are made to believe. And again, the University system has responded to the situation. There is virtually no University Senate that has not outlawed the sale of handouts. As usual it pays to keep the blackmail instead of examining the fundamentals of the problem. Why do students need such handouts and indeed pressurise lecturers to offer it for sale? Some of the answers: The nation does not have a book industry, at least for the tertiary level of education; the nation does not have a book industry, at least for the tertiary level of education; the books are just not available and in the few instances that they stray in, they are not affordable. The students are lazy and will prefer, in tune with the national culture to pay for, instead of reading for their degrees. The students we inherit from the secondary schools do not have a reading habit. Lastly, the quality of entrants into the academia has become more suspect. It will pay the nation to focus more on how to remedy these fundamental problems, which can be located differently phrased in the UN report instead of abusing the victims.
There is no doubt that cultism remains pervasive on our University campuses. The cultic terrorists have wreaked untold havoc on the campuses. These include loss of life and limbs, creation of an environment of fear and insecurity, and the generation of bad image for the nation. The government and the public have wrongly placed the blame on the lecturers who are victims most of the time or solely on the University system, which is, in the main, just the receptacle of a deep societal malaise. When the tragic cult killings happened at Ife in the early days of the Obasanjo administration, it made a big issue out of it including rolling out an ultimatum for cultism to be eradicated from the campuses and threatening Vice-Chancellors with sanctions if this was not achieved within a ridiculously short time. They were given some small amount of money to effect this gargantuan task. Of course University administrators knew it was all a joke . So they played along. They organised rallies at which acclaimed cultists confessed to much applause. As if to confirm the situation years after, President Obasanjo himself recently visited a campus in which there had been the publicised cult killings of at least four students within the year and gave the administration an unconditional pat on the back!
The nation has been unable to truthfully address the problem of cultism for a number of reasons. It is the children of the high and mighty in society that are the brains and kingpins of cults. Given the type of guns and drugs involved, some considerable wealth is needed, which can only be afforded by the children of parents of considerable wealth. Secondly, it throws up the question of poverty on the campuses. The recruits in these cults are poverty-ridden students that are lured into the cults by the rich students. Thirdly, the issue of corruption and abuse of offices and positions is involved. The children of the ruling class apprehended are regularly left off the hook.
In an outline, the true causes of cultism include: Students imbibing general militaristic culture, which celebrates the power of coercion and violence. This was a direct product of prolonged military rule. Secondly, the military deliberately introduced cultism onto campus as an instrument to fight popular/progressive forces reigned against them. Thirdly, irrespective of this public posturing, quite a number of Vice-chancellors find it expedient to employ cult in the governance of their campuses. Maybe unknown to the Nigerian public, the Universities remain the bastion of militarism. It is strange but it is true that University administrators employ a large amount of violence and intimidation to govern their campuses rather than civilised consultations. Fourthly, students have a lot of excess time on their hands —there are no books in the libraries, practical classes are not held due to lack of facilities, tutorials/seminars are not held due to understaffing resulting from under funding. Fifthly, most campuses have grossly inadequate recreational facilities. The fourth and fifth reasons make for idle hands for which the devil creates employment, as they say. Lastly is the combination of poverty of the generality of the students and its exploitation by the brats from rich home highlighted earlier.
One sad offshoot of the phenomenon of cultism on our campuses is its exploitation by politicians. All cadres of politicians — Ministers, Governors, Parliamentarians etc employ students of tertiary institutions as thugs. Recognised cult leaders from the campuses coordinate these thugs. Yet in a most hypocritical way, Government pretends to address the problem by mere grandstanding and allotment of blame. The nation needs to worry seriously about this matter but it must be honest in its analysis and must be ready to address the fundamental causes of the malaise.
The government propaganda machine is on full blast; strikes are the problems of the Nigerian University system. Once you ban strikes, you will have world standards in our Universities! Given government’s overall lack of credibility, it would have been adequate to just ignore it to shout itself tired. Also more people know that government propaganda was mere ASUU bashing. When Obasanjo was maligning ASUU from Calabar to Bwari, ASUU was not on strike though there were strikes in other sectors — polytechnics, hospitals, local governments, etc and by other Unions in the Universities. However, not only does government have some support among some members of the public-students eager to graduate, parents eager to complete the training of their children, purveyors of commerce on the University campuses, etc, it has generated a debate and the issues should be joined. Compeers on TV talk shows, Vice-Chancellors in crisis or playing to the gallery of Government, newspaper columnists etc have taken sides in the debate.
Joining the debate, we wish to raise the following questions: What causes strikes? Why are they recurring? Must strikes be enduring? What are the alternatives to strikes and are they effective in our clime? As Oshiomole said strikes are cries of pain. They are political action to draw attention to workers’ plight. They, especially in the industries, produce economic impact to force the hands of an unwilling management. It is an organised civil political action in place of anarchy. It pays authorities to declare strikes illegal or frivolous or frequent while they side-track the reasons that lead to the strikes. By May 1999, all public secondary and primary school teachers nationwide had been on strike for weeks. They had not been paid salaries for seven months! For seven months they persevered. They put the interests of their students and pupils before the survival of their families. They lost dignity, they became borrowers. Landlords ejected them with ignominy. Some of them dropped dead. But we all went on with our lives. We either did not know they existed or just ignored them until they cried out in pain through a strike. Even at that, some government propagandists and ‘patriotic newspaper editors’ attacked them. They were reminded of the evilness of disrupting school calendar; they were urged to take the interest of the children into consideration; not to derail our ‘nascent’ democracy. Such callousness, such hypocrisy. Their hunger, the fate of their own children, their right to be paid for work already done did not matter, the fate of their own children, their right to be paid for work already done did not matter. Their pain-the reason they went on strike were all forgotten. That is the way of our uncaring nation. Such is the degree of insensitivity and irresponsibility of the governing authorities. Such is the degree of selfishness and hypocrisy of our public. The cause(s) of a crisis is never urgently apprehended nor honestly acknowledged. Rather the victim is blamed, the crisis persists and the nation wobbles on.
Since the organisation in the eye of the storm is ASUU, we might narrow the question to why does ASUU go on strike? There are two levels of crisis: ASUU’s relationship to the Government and ASUU’s relationship to local University authorities.
Governments own most of the Universities. Government has severely neglected education. What is going on in the Universities is a farce. There is no good quality research going on-forget the proliferation of professorships. The international community is rejecting our degrees. The private sector is spending an inordinate amount retraining our products at a level that should have not been warranted. We all know this but the University lecturers know and feel it more. Their names and reputations are at stake. The lecturer is being asked to perpetrate fraud, to connive at churning out sub-standard products — research and graduates. He knows that in the long run the nation will turn around and blame him. Why didn’t you say? How could you have permanently collaborated in churning out these nation-damaging products? The managers of the system — University Administrations and Councils turn a blind eye to the problems. They ‘manage’ the money given to them by government. The facts that there are not books, chemicals, and equipment do not bother them. Once they can service council meetings, the vice-chancellor’s comfort and showcase convocations — all is well.
The Senates of Universities year in, year out connive and award unworthy degrees. This situation put the union of academics in a quandary. As intellectual workers the tools are not provided, the work environment is ugly and hostile. He is isolated from international contacts and standards. The remuneration is uncompetitive. As a purveyor of truth, he is dissatisfied with his products. The options are clear, ship out; remain, collude and vegetate; or struggle to improve the system. A number of individual academics felt it was its patriotic duty to rescue the system. Therein lies the problem. It can be stated without fear of contradiction that all the improvement that has come to the universities, as inadequate as they are, have been a product of ASUU’s struggles. And the struggles have been bloody against a ruling class that does not understand the worth and imperativeness of education. It is the culmination of these struggles that have formed the basis of the ongoing blackmail of the union.
March 2002