The five-day warning strike embarked upon by the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) threatens the fragile stability of the country’s tertiary education system, and all efforts must be made to resolve it.
The causes of the latest warning strike are depressingly familiar: the non-payment of over N30 billion in earned allowances, government’s refusal to pay workers in university staff schools, and its non-implementation of the renegotiated agreement it reached with the unions in 2009.
As expected, the strike paralysed activity on the campuses of public universities across the nation. The main gates were sealed off by the striking workers, preventing many students, academic staff and visitors from entering, and often resulting in severe traffic congestion. Aggressive strike-compliance teams sent by SSANU and NASU ensured that the suspension of work was obeyed. Precious man-hours were lost, schedules were disrupted, and important tasks were left undone.
The right to withhold work is a cornerstone of labour relations in a functioning democracy, and both unions have fully exercised their privileges in this regard. They gave a 14-day ultimatum to the Federal Government to address their concerns; this was ignored. They then went on a three-day protest in Abuja in July, finally embarking on this warning strike to press home their demands. SSANU and NASU say they are currently reviewing their options, and may undertake a total and indefinite strike if they deem it necessary.
The real tragedy in all this is that it is a confrontation which could have been avoided. Instead of following the normal trajectory of ignoring worker appeals that has been the standard tactic of successive administrations, government could have demonstrated a willingness to explore new approaches by keeping the lines of communication open. Government intransigence is all the more surprising, given the fact that both unions had gone on a debilitating three-month strike in December 2017.
If the Buhari administration had agreed to the payment of earned allowances to SSANU and NASU, it should have sought to engage the unions if it was unable to adhere to agreed-upon timelines. The same stance should have been adopted in the matter of the renegotiated 2009 agreement. Even the vexed staff school matter is not an insurmountable dispute; tripartite discussions involving government, the unions and university authorities would certainly have arrived at a mutually-beneficial solution to the problem.
All parties must now take advantage of the opportunity offered by the warning strike to re-engage with one another and genuinely seek to head off an indefinite strike whose negative effects will only worsen an already-bad situation.
The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, and his labour and productivity counterpart, Dr. Chris Ngige, both return to office with the benefit of hard-won experience in dealing with these issues, and they must put it to good use in ensuring that the nation does not have to endure yet another needless strike. A knowledgeable government negotiating team must be put together as soon as possible and mandated to talk to the unions in good faith.
For their part, SSANU and NASU would do well to drop the unproductive strategy of waiting to see what the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) gets from government in its own negotiations, and then proceeding to make exactly the same demands.
Academics and non-academics do not do the same work, even though they are all university workers. The former, for example, has teaching and examination duties that are not undertaken by the latter, whose main focus is essentially administrative in nature. Such tactics only betray a poverty of thought that can easily be exploited by those seeking to knock heads together.
Strikes are ultimately disastrous to everyone. They waste valuable time and energy, dissipate precious resources, harden attitudes and make eventual resolution that much harder to attain. The best antidote to them is to prevent them from starting in the first place. But achieving this requires that all parties show tact, display forbearance and demonstrate a preparedness to rise above selfish interests and narrow concerns.
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