Tag: ASUU

ASUU, perhaps the most visible industrial trade union in the country is beginning to rumble ominously again. For more than two years now, the volcano has been quiescent, allowing the present government, an extended honeymoon period during which the government has been making all manner of announcements mainly without a robust response from the union. It seems that all that is about to change as the union has started making pointed references to the famous, or if you prefer, the infamous 2009 agreement between the government and the union. The union recently reminded the government of the existence of that agreement but the initial response from the government was most discouraging. The Honourable minister of education, betraying lamentable ignorance of the matter on ground, announced that no such agreement existed. It is noteworthy however that the minister has been brought up to date with correct information. That agreement certainly exists. It was signed, sealed but lamentably undelivered at a time when a one-time bona fide member of the union was the President of the Republic.

The 2009 agreement was detailed and wide ranging. It was thrashed out between the union and a large government delegation which had the authority to act on behalf of a conscious and fully responsible government. At least that was the impression that was given at that time. It was designed to be an agreement to end all agreements and in the usual tradition of ASUU, it was enthusiastically endorsed by the rank and file of the union before it was signed. The most important clause in the agreement was the one which stipulated that the agreement was to be revised within two years and every two years after that, to keep everything fresh and up to date. Long story short, successive governments have repudiated the agreement. Sixteen years after it was signed, it has remained unclaimed and unfulfilled, as the university system tottered towards a terminal state of collapse.

At the time that agreement was signed, there were twenty-seven Federal government owned universities, nineteen state owned universities and thirty-two private ones. At the heart of the agreement was the issue of funding. The consensus was that the publicly owned universities were severely under-funded, making it impossible for them to function as decent centres of learning, not to talk of excellence, as they should be. The government agreed with this assessment which is why it put pen to paper, committing itself to providing sufficient funds to rescue the universities from decay. In the meantime, the government, at the behest of the union, restated her commitment to the provision of free education at the service point. The union, exhausted from seventeen bruising years of continual struggle with successive governments, both military and civilian, heaved a heavy sigh of relief and waited for the government to keep her own side of the bargain. Sixteen years and several bitter and unproductive strikes later, the union is still waiting and wailing.

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The union was still waiting on government confirmation when out of the blue in 2012, the Federal government which all the while had been pleading insolvency announced the immediate setting up of twelve brand new universities. How did the government, broke as it was, find the required funds to bring twelve twelve universities to life at one stroke? The insincerity of the government in this respect was hinted at by the fact that one of the new universities was to be sited at Otuoke, a tiny settlement on the Otuoke river, a tributary of a tributary of the River Niger. Everything about Otuoke screamed humility, if not backwardness except that it was the birthplace of the sitting President of the Republic. A government which suddenly realised that it did not have the funds to do the honourable thing by the university system was going to provide the money with which to launch what were described as universities in twelve places at the same time and with immediate effect. The problems hanging around the neck of the witch have been compounded by her inability to stop giving birth to daughters. Now, there are sixty-three Federal government universities in Nigeria following what can only be described as an explosion in university founding instead of funding. At that time, it just did not make any sense that the government which had studiously neglected to take responsibility for twenty-seven universities was now prepared to provide the funds which were required for the added responsibility for twelve new universities. The restoration of the glories which departed from our universities all of three decades ago is obviously a high mountain to climb. Under current circumstances, it is pertinent to ask if our leaders quite know what a university is supposed to be.

With the proliferation of universities, both public and private, it is becoming clear that the principle of tertiary education has been exposed to the harsh winds of the reality of our everyday existence. There is an unruly scramble for the appearance of scholarship even as substance is being visibly eroded from our educational system.It is only a matter of time before we are found out by the truth of university degrees devoid of all practical value. For the most part what we now have are university graduates who can only be described as being barely literate and without any real or applicable knowledge from which our society can derive any tangible benefits. We have been deceived into thinking that the hood is more important than the monk. Indeed, the monk has become invisible or at least butt naked and shivering from the icy blasts of the winds of ignorance. It is now pertinent to question the proliferation of universities in a nation with such scant regard for those who have, for one reason or the other chosen to take up the challenge of an academic career. Lecturers in Nigeria, through their union, have consistently drawn attention to the sorry state of our universities for more than thirty years now. Clearing the accumulated dross of that struggle has become a truly Herculean task but one which needs urgent attention.

In the last few months, I have come across a plethora of advertisements for all cadres of academic staff, from the humble but hopeful graduate assistant, to the decorated but weary professor in a broad spectrum of media in Nigeria. With the birth of so many new universities, this is only to be expected. The number of academic positions created in the last five years by all those new universities is simply staggering. According to NUC rules and regulations, for a department to be accredited, it must have a minimum of six academic members of staff divided between fledgling junior lecturers and experienced professors. It is worth stressing that six is a minimum number, accepted only in emergency situations. When I arrived at Ife with a PhD in 1976, I came to a department with eighteen active members of staff and with new ones joining those on ground all the time. The department hummed with activity until late in the night. Undergraduates were working on their various projects in well equipped laboratories. The postgraduate programme had just started at the time and the best graduating students in Pharmacy had been retained to get the programme off the ground preparatory to becoming lecturers in their own right. All the eager young members of staff of that time, at least those of them who went all the way in an academic career are hoary haired grandparents, now retired from the rigours of the classroom. Not many of them have been replaced or can even be replaced. Over the years, as new schools of Pharmacy were founded, many of the staff of the department, enticed by promotions which were necessarily slow in an established department were siphoned off and new recruits with desired qualifications became increasingly difficult to attract. Any objective assessment of that department will return lower and lower scores until now when qualified candidates are very few and those that have stepped into vacant positions are under the harsh environment of their work place are plainly unenthusiastic. In the meantime, there has been an explosion in the number of Pharmacy schools and the number of aspiring pharmacy students has climbed through the roof. Teaching them has become an unwelcome and unremunerated chore, not worthy of the attention of the brightest graduates. But for the recent embargo on the establishment of new universities, the situation, at least in terms of staff recruitment would have continued down a steep, perilous slope. And yet, the number of eager student applicants for a place in the Faculty is increasing all the time. The pressure on the dwindling resources at the disposal of all our universities is fast approaching breaking point and needs to be toned down as quickly as possible through a massive and eminently sensible cash injection from a clear eyed government.

The 2009 agreement between ASUU and the government may have been adequate for that time but it is clearly no longer the case. So much slush has passed under the bridge that the situation needs very careful handling. That there is now a moratorium on the establishment of Federal universities suggests that the government may have been put into a frame of mind to live up to its long deferred responsibility. But, to be honest, I am not holding my breath any more than to prevent my being choked.