ASUU: Speaking to a prodigal child
By
THERE is some rush for employment in the higher education sector now. You may not believe it! And you will not be wrong if you attribute it to the increase in salaries and allowances of academic and non-academic staff in the universities in the last three years. But the reason is more than this: An old friend had left the University system to seek employment in the banking sector, some five or six years ago when the salary of a senior lecturer was barely about N15,000 per month or N180,000 annually.
In the bank, he earned over half a million naira for a start and earns about N2 million now. Today, he is eager to go back to the university and has been serious about it. The colleagues he left behind years back are almost at par with him, having secured robust salary increases twice since the Obasanjo regime came on board. Apart from this, his main reason was that while the banking job is strenuous and almost drains his blood, his colleagues at the University earn their fat pay with little work. When they are ever in session, three or four lectures a week, no tutorials, freedom to do their private businesses, and consultancy, extra income through handouts, free meal or car refurbishment assistance by students who for one favour or the other are willing to pay, and free other things including romance!
But much more attractive to this friend and to others who now see the universities as the safest employment haven is the opportunity to earn salaries and allowances for no work done during strikes. And the strikes have been many, running to several months in each instance. Please recall that Obasanjo's administration has been most unfairly treated by the ASUU as it was greeted barely two months on the saddle with over three months strike. Since then it has been a ding-dong affair with each strike often couched in populist idea of fighting for the restoration of the University system. This is why the write up by Hope Eghagha "ASUU: Speaking to a deaf father" in The Guardian of March 3, 2003, distressed a lot of people who have been more than embarrassed by ASUU's blackmail and intimidation of all Nigerians since the return of democracy.
The logic by Eghagha that the resort to the anomaly of strikes and total paralysis of the education sector was to redeem it, is laughable. I believe that only God has the ability to revive the dead and it is absurd and illogical that ASUU has to kill the University system in order to draw attention for reviving it. It is like a Doctor having to kill the patient before curing him. Even the use of anesthesia by Doctors is a last resort and care is taken not to give an overdose or else the patient is gone forever! "That an institution that encourages vigorous discourse and reasoned dialogue as the vehicle for expanding the frontiers of knowledge", now had to engage in blackmail and unreasonable selfish arm-twisting of Government is a sad reminder of the death of reason in the academia.
The argument that since businessmen found succour in shady deals and 419, then academics also had to follow suit using unreasonable means is an argument that is hardly tenable. What the academic has been doing is actually more than 419! They go on strike, get increase in pay, and then after a few months go on strike again for more pay. During the period of strike, they engage in their businesses and go at month's end to collect their pay in the banks, for no work done. Yet they claim to be fighting for the betterment of the education. The question is, who generated the income they come at every month end to collect? Definitely other Nigerians! For the last four years when ASUU and workers of higher institutions have obtained two salary increases, they have only graduated one set of students. It would be hard to find a student who entered University for a four-year course in 1999 to be in final year now. Impossible! Our investigation shows that ASUU had been on strike for four years in the last 14 years. Only their members gain, other Nigerians - government, students, parents etc are the losers! A good test of responsible unionism or commitment to the development of the system, would have been for ASUU members not to draw their pay cheque at the end of the month. Then Nigerians would be convinced that academics are really concerned about the poor state of the university system.
Eghagha who believes that ASUU members had to resort to anomaly because the "father" is deaf, needs to look for another qualifier for the regimes before this one. If this "father" is "deaf" and yet was able to increase the salary of an assistant lecturer from about N10,000 in 1999 to almost N70,000 now, if this "father" is deaf and had improved funding of the higher education sector by about 300 per cent of what it was in 1999; if this "father" is deaf and has revived research grants overseas allowances, scholarship for students and several other incentives for the education sector within four years, then the "fathers" before were deaf, dumb and blind, while the "child" must also be suffering from kleptomania. The question for Eghagha and his ASUU friends is what they would do if a child demands that all his father's income must be spent on feeding him because he had Kwashiorkor early in life, and the child threatens suicide in the event of failure to meet this demand?
It is a fact of life that sometimes because of selfish consideration, we are tempted to think that we deserve all attention but the truth is that other aspects of life must also be attended to, for us to even enjoy our own life. With all the claim to intellectual prowess, is it not selfish for a union in this country to assume the authority over the appropriation of the nation's resources and go on strike in the event it cannot get its prescribed percentage allocation? This same Union would want Government to cede all its landed property in Abuja and Lagos to it, so that it can manage it. The Union wants 10 per cent of every barrel of oil sold allocated to it for University education. Then the Federal Government should appropriate its own income for state universities governed by state laws. Having bullied the federal government to sign an agreement that is ultra vires in many respects, ASUU is on another strike to force government to implement the agreement that is void for lack of capacity.
Obasanjo has no mandate to sign off any landed property of Nigeria or unilaterally cede oil funds even if he contracts to do so. It will amount to an impeachable offence! The truth is that Government does not have the capacity to implement that agreement. There is nothing wrong for ASUU to transform itself into a political party and its manifesto could be to spend 50 per cent of the National Income to run universities. If it can convince Nigerians to vote for such an ASUU party, then they can present a National budget to suit this policy! This would be more acceptable than this current blackmail and shadow boxing.
I would be surprised if ASUU members will not be calling for the head of Eghagha with his call for re-negotiation of the terms of establishing a university. ASUU has vehemently rejected this initiative. They will not also have anything to do with a suggestion that all universities do not have to pay the same salary. Imagine that ASUU insist that State Universities earn the same salary with Federal Universities and that federal authorities should augment, the finances of state universities if they can't pay. Yet, we want Federalism? Why is it not possible for each university, set up under separate laws to determine its focus and financial set up? It may be possible for Delta State University for instance to pay more than Ondo State University or vice versa given its resource endowment. Yet many of our lecturers studied abroad and are aware that universities are not run on the same level, or pay structure. It is clear that ASUU has gone on this strike too many and no longer draws the sympathy of anybody. ASUU may have planned to use this strike as blackmail on Obasanjo's re-election but it will fail. The sustenance of democracy is far more important to Nigerians than to allow any group, be it lecturers, doctors or PENGASSAN to truncate it.
Rather than the whole "nation" rising to say "no" to a "deaf father" as Eghagha suggests, I think the whole "nation" is saying "no" to a recalcitrant and ungrateful child, whose antics of crying every time to get more food has fallen flat. The "nation" believes that we cannot in one day, refresh a malnourished child; that a gradual and systematic infusion would lead to a long lasting, healthy growth! More importantly, is the need for ASUU not to kill its own source of sustenance because the worm that is happy killing the dog, kills itself. There is nothing bad about migrating out to where labour perceives as offering better standards. In a way, brain drain in some cases helps economic growth through repatriation of income earned abroad.
April 2003