It has become fashionable – and indeed a status symbol – to post pictures of Nigerians graduating from foreign universities. A close look at the surnames of the graduates says one thing: they’re mainly the children of the elites. Even in the posting of such pictures, attention are often paid to the university in question before one is accused of graduating from a third rate foreign varsity like the finance minister is often accused of.
Like almost everything Nigerian, some have grown so numb that they do not see anything wrong when leaders flash the images of their sibling’s matriculation or graduation ceremonies in some of the world’s most prestigious or elitist universities. There was a time holding wedding ceremonies and other parties in Dubai and London was in vogue. Some say that’s simply who we are.
It is against this background that I want to address the current “total, comprehensive and indefinite” strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which commenced last Monday in response to the federal government’s failure to fulfill the 2009 agreement it reached with the union.
Strikes by university lecturers is nothing new, it is a recurring decimal in our polity. The surprise this time around is that it took this long. The lecturers have been giving the signal for some time now, but as usual, there are “more important” matters to deal with than lecturers strike. After all, how many of the children of government functionaries and the elites attend Nigerian universities? For whatever it is worth, there appears to be a silent conspiracy to simply allow public universities die a slow and painful death.
The last major ASUU strike during the regime of former President Goodluck Jonathan was long drawn and bitter. To gain a better understanding of the issues at stake in the 2009 agreement a flashback is necessary.
At the height of the 2014 strike, the former president was quoted as saying: “We have witnessed strikes before; most of the strikes, government don’t agree to the extent we have agreed before they (ASUU) called off the strike. I believe in Nigeria, politics has crawled into so many things we do. When you observe the way people do certain things, you have the feeling that something else is happening… There are some of the issues in the 2009 agreement; there are those issues that they know cannot be implemented.”
Countering the former president, Dr. Nasir Isa Fagge, former ASUU president said: “What government has so far been doing is no more than a repeat performance of a one-act-play: all the deceptions, propaganda, lies, mischiefs and such other Shenanigans were tried by previous Governments, including Military Juntas, but our resolve to save the University System and our country remained unwaivered. We will continue to carry the banner of this struggle to its logical conclusion. I urge all our members to maintain the spirit of camaraderie and remain firmly resolute in ensuring that our patriotic struggle succeeds.”
These were two diametrically opposed views from the actors in the last fight to position, re-position or politicise tertiary education in Nigeria; it goes to show how “complex” the issue has become. A major determinant of national university policy from 1991 appears to be the agreement negotiated between ASUU and the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN). These agreements officially referred to as the ASUU/FGN Agreements, have also come to be the major determinant of academic peace, progress, stability and quality on most university campuses.
Since July 1 2013 – as has been the case on an average of twenty years since 1992 – the academic peace, stability and standard has come under severe strain due to disagreements between the signatories to another agreement – the 2009 ASUU/FGN Agreement on state of implementation.
At his fifth presidential media chat in 2014, Jonathan said the nation’s bitter politics had crept into the strike and was responsible for the refusal of the lecturers to suspend their action despite the government’s effort. “In the past, they did not go this far before a strike was called off; but now politics has gone into everything.”
He however did not elaborate when pressed further by a five-member interview panel on his claim about ASUU demands being politicised. I left with the impression that we are still on ‘a long walk to freedom’ (apologies to former President Nelson Mandela). In the interview though, the former president underscored the important role of education in liberating Nigerians saying his administration was the first to carry out an inventory of the infrastructure in all the nation’s universities with a determination to change things for the better.
He said on the completion of the inventory of the infrastructure, his administration set aside N100 billion to reverse the infrastructural decay in the tertiary education sector, adding that the situation would not improve overnight.
On the allegation that the federal government refused to implement the agreement it reached with the ASUU in 2009, which forced the teachers to go on strike, the President said the issue was beyond the 2009 agreement. According to him, the federal government has agreed to all the issues in the 2009 agreement, except the agreement on the transfer of assets and wondered how such an agreement was signed in the first place. “There are some of the issues in the 2009 agreement; there are those issues that they know cannot be implemented,” he said.
But in a letter to the Federal Government dated August 20, 2014 ASUU had expressed dissatisfaction with government’s offer of N100billion as a way out of the strike. “We observe that the Committee is so far mentioning only N100billion. If the implementation is to be related to the funding requirements in the 2009 ASUU/FGN Agreement and the Jan 2012 MoU, what is due for 2012 and 2013 is N500billion not N100billion. Only the provision of this sum will meet the immediate needs of the universities.”
Fagge, had at a press briefing in Lagos late August 2014, said, the Association wants the best for the students and calling off the strike without getting it (the funds required) will amount to a waste of time with all the protests. “If the Federal Government doesn’t shift grounds, we’ll also remain here until we are attended to appropriately. We can’t call off the strike now and return to what we’ve been going through over the years. Or embark on the strike action again after three months or in one or two years’ time. Do we just continue deceiving Nigerians when facilities are not in place for proper learning? We want to address the problems once and for all.”
An agreement, as far as I know, is in jurisprudence binding and, therefore, subject to judicial interpretation should any of the parties to the agreement have reason to believe that the terms are not followed. The ASUU/FGN Agreements shouldn’t have been a different exemption from this universal jurisprudential principle especially in a democracy like Nigeria.
But here we have different interpretation to things. The fact though is that the immediate victims are not the signatories but the Nigerian society who must trail behind others in Africa and elsewhere on the international scene in this regard. For one, and I need to emphasise this, ASUU has nothing to lose from the truncation of academic programmes and the abridgment of academic syllabuses that turns out unemployable graduates.
From reports, the strike is holding firmly across the country. While a country like Singapore became one of Asia’s great success stories, transforming itself from a developing country to a modern industrial economy in one generation trough education, here we are toying with the destiny of millions of Nigerians. During the last decade, Singapore’s education system remained consistently at or near the top of most major world education ranking systems.
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