Civil unrest in our tertiary institutions in Nigeria has become a menace that our public educational sector and our country is grappling and battling with year in year out. Of concern is the incessant strike action of the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU), the umbrella body of all academic staff in our public universities. Sadly, the current strike action has been ongoing for the past eight months. It is nauseating that government has not been able to do anything about the strike action. Rather, the members of political class are busy doing their politicking and preparing for upcoming general elections while the lives of our youths are wasting away.
Having painstakingly reflected on lack of proper and adequate funding for education in Nigeria with its attendant incessant strike action from members of academics in public universities in Nigeria, I have come to provide some panacea to the menace. These measures presented here will go a long way to tackle the problem and provide for us the much-needed stability not only in our public universities but in all our educational sectors.
The first measure is harmonisation of all salary scales for all civil servants and public servants in the country via enactment of bill at the National Assembly. Let all workers working for government either in the civil service or in the public service including political office holders be put on the same harmonised salary scale, after all, workers go to the same market. For it is counterproductive that in the same country, in the same civil service, and in the same public service, whereas some workers are well remunerated, workers such as those in Central Bank of Nigeria, workers in some parastatals have their graduates earning millions of Naira as monthly salary; political office holders such as members of parliament earns tens of millions of Naira as monthly salary while very many others, the primary school teachers, secondary school teachers and university teachers and workers in the ministries earn peanuts as monthly salary. This is not acceptable.
Members of the public, civil right organisations, labour unions, and members of ASUU have been docile on this for long. ASUU should have been fighting tooth and nail in seeing to it that the injustice of having to pay some workers far ahead of others while others receive meagre salary is addressed. Whereas members of parliaments receive tens of millions of Naira for sitting for less than 30 days in a month, members of academic and other workers that work round the clock in the services of their nation receive paltry hundreds of thousands of Naira in the face of rising inflation ravaging and pauperizing the citizens of the country.
Let ASUU in collaboration with labour unions, NLC, TUC and progressively minded civil rights organisations sponsor a bill to the National Assembly that all salary scales of workers in Nigeria be harmonized to accommodate all workers in the civil service, public service inclusive of political service public holders, the president, vice president, ministers, governors, commissioners, chairmen of local government, councillors and permanent board members of corporations and parastatals.
I postulate that for example, on 20 grade level scale, let the president be on grade level 20, the vice president on grade level 19 with vice chancellors of public universities, CMD of federal medical centres together with their equivalent in other sectors. Let governors and professors in our public universities be on grade level 18 with consultants in federal medical centres together with their equivalent in other sectors, and ministers and associate professors in public universities together with their equivalent in other sectors be placed on level 17.
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Let commissioners, members of the National Assembly upper chamber, senior lecturers and permanent secretaries in ministries and parastatals be on level 16 and their equivalent in other sectors. Chairmen of local government councils, directors in the ministries, lecturer 1 should be on level 15 together with their equivalent in other sectors. Let local government councillors, lecturer II, principals of secondary schools be placed on grade level 14 together with their equivalent in other sectors. Let other categories of workers be placed on other grade levels downward.
It is pertinent to state that all workers on all the grade levels should be made to earn the same basic salary, the same allowances; in fact, the salary should be consolidated. The simple reason for recommending this is that since all workers go to the same market, there is no reason why all should not earn the same salary in line with their different uniform statuses. With this done, political office holders and members of ruling class in Nigeria will be in the fore front of increase in salary from time to time when their salary is not sufficient for them to cater for their needs. Workers will just wake up one day and discover that their salaries have been increased!
The other recommended measure is sponsorship of bill to compel all public servants and political office holders to have their children educated in public schools. The only reason why the members of the ruling class have shown little or no concern to provision of functional education and proper funding of education in Nigeria is that their children are not schooling in any of our public schools; rather their children and wards are sent outside the country in search of good and functional education in Europe, America and Asia countries. Why would they be concerned that there are no good facilities, right items of equipment and tools to train the children of the poor masses in our public universities?
Why would they be concerned with incessant strike action of academic staff of public universities and why would they be concerned with the fact that children of the poor masses are sitting idle at home for the past eight months?
It is on this note that I am calling on ASUU leadership to refuse being ambushed by the federal government as they want to do now. Let there be a change in tactics. I recommend that ASUU call off the strike and embrace the pursuit of implementation of this panacea as postulated. Let ASUU resume work but team up with NLC, TUC and other progressively minded civil right organisation to sponsor two bills to the National assembly, the first one to be on harmonisation of salary of all workers in Nigeria with that of public office holders, inclusive of members of National Assembly in the manner discussed above. While the second bill should be to compel all public office holders, would-be public office holders and members of the ruling class to have their children and wards educated in our public schools. Let ASUU, NLC, TUC and civil right organizations be at alert and be prepared to shut down civil service, public service in case the members of National Assembly and the ruling class refuse to have these bills passed as a matter of urgency. This struggle is long overdue. This is the right way to go.
- Dr. Bolaji, writes from Abuja and he can be contacted on bolarinwa.s.bolaji@gmail.com