Tag: Fed Govt

FORGIVE the pessimism, but there will be no end to dithering over education in Nigeria. The merry-go-round simply won’t stop. Those saddled with the responsibility of managing Nigeria’s education system have for decades shown neither the depth of understanding needed to make it work even at the rudimentary level nor the vision required to make it great, effective, productive or transcendental. This, like every other thing about Nigeria, is a peculiarly Nigerian mystery. Last week, after much pestering, including a one-week warning strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in November last year, the federal government has finally conceded to another effete round of renegotiating the 2009 Fed Govt/ASUU agreement.
For a federal government enamoured of reaching agreements it never hoped to keep, it is not so amazing that they have become both used to embarking on negotiations and inured to honouring agreements. The usual style is that after bellyaching over certain key provisions of the agreements, the government, half-winded and half-awake, eventually agrees to sign. The ASUU, which has become in one breath a glutton for punishment, and in another breath an incurable optimist, also eventually pens the agreements half-convinced that the serial truce breaker it had just negotiated with had no cat in hell’s chance of honouring anything, let alone a rigorous agreement requiring commitment and a huge budgetary outlay.
Consider the following. The 2001 agreement between ASUU and the federal government was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. It was, therefore, largely adapted in 2009 after two years of onerous and enervating negotiations and nearly an academic session of strike. Four years later, it was obvious that the government was either inattentive to the agreement it freely reached or it was entirely disinterested in what it gave the impression was a bothersome educational headache. Six months of strike thus followed in 2013, culminating in another round of renegotiation and agreement in December of that year. Alas, even that agreement was also dishonoured. To be sure, there were always gestures in the direction of the agreements, with some sops given to the lecturers, but the government has always been evilly careful not to do anything fundamental about education, as if the disagreements provide it a raison d’être.
If you thought that the pirouette of negotiations and agreements and renegotiations and breaches was all there was to the exasperating malady, you knew little about Nigerian officialdom. In 2009, the teams to the negotiation (ignore the word renegotiation) between ASUU and federal government were led by Bolanle Babalakin as Chairman, Committee of Pro-Chancellors, Gamaliel Onosode as the government’s own chairman of the renegotiation committee, and Ukachukwu Awuzie as president of ASUU. Some eight years down the line, with two Fed Govt/ASUU agreements bruised and battered, the federal government has turned round to make Dr Babalakin the leader of the government team. The muddle and insincerity can’t get much worse than that.
What was wrong with the 2009 agreement? And what ailed the 2013 redone agreement? It is understood why the government is not tired of negotiations. But why is ASUU enthusiastic about another round of what will likely turn out a wasteful exercise? The answers are simple. The only thing wrong with both the 2009 and 2013 agreements, despite the government squeezing water out of the ASUU stone, is not the agreements per se but the government’s claim that the kind of money needed to implement them was simply not available. The huge emoluments and allowances of public officials and their aides do not corroborate the government’s argument. As for ASUU, the only explanation for its enthusiasm is that it has since reconciled itself to eking out small gains from unlimited and often protracted negotiations. If snail walk is all it takes to make progress, it thinks, by all means, so be it.
The substance of the disagreement is plain enough for all to see. Education in Nigeria is in a shambles, completely broken down. To remedy the dire situation, ASUU has among other demands asked for government to progressively raise budgetary allocations to education from the piddling figures of today to some 26 percent of the budget; allocate half of that to the universities, including compelling states to make reasonable increases in their own allocations to state universities; and incentivise lecturers by paying them earned academic allowance now estimated to be about N128bn, among other very crucial demands. The government has on its own responded by leaving untouched virtually all the maladies afflicting the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education and instead preferred to set up new ones. It is true that less than a quarter of those qualified for admission to universities or polytechnics find placement in the few tertiary institutions available, but why add to the morass?
The new 16-man committee constituted to examine the 2009 agreement afresh gives the government and ASUU some hope that something agreeable to all stakeholders would be fashioned out. Nigerians will hope that everyone can be spared another needless break in the academic calendar, with students in particular desperate to graduate no matter how deplorable the quality of their degrees and diplomas. Cynics who distrust government motive will tune off naturally and expect the worst. The government will hope that the 2009 agreement can be reconfigured by a chastened negotiation team to conform with the new recessionary realism of the day.
This column takes a totally different view. It would be pleasantly surprised should the negotiation team break the mould and produce a workable, implementable agreement. In the opinion of this column, that implementable agreement is far-fetched. If the right thing could not be done when the money was available, even when the country had a former member of ASUU, Dr Jonathan, at the helm of affairs, it is unrealistic to expect anything better when the Education minister, given his action over the 13 new varsities whose vice chancellors were summarily sacked, and President Muhammadu Buhari, have shown a worrisome lack of depth in tertiary education affairs. Where the Education minister has been fairly narrow-minded, the president has shown a disturbing proclivity for designing and executing programmes in consonance with available funds. He does not envision ambitious educational reforms which should drive a frantic desire to source for funds.
In short, this column sees the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement as a pointer to the rudimentariness of the government’s education programme. It is a pointer to the president’s lack of education vision, and a far more annoying pointer to the ordinariness of the work going on in the Education ministry. Rather than focusing on renegotiating the 2009 agreement, should the Buhari presidency not have presented a lofty and breathtaking education vision for the country? Should that great vision not show the country what the goals of a revived education sector are, and how the funds necessary to drive the vision would be sourced, and perhaps what roles citizens are expected to play? After almost two years in office, should the government not be telling Nigerians the milestones it hopes to achieve, and how and, more importantly, why Nigerian schools would in the near future outclass those of West Africa and Africa, and thereafter compete favourably with the rest of the world?
It is of course not expected that ASUU would give up, for to give up is to finally bury education in Nigeria. Indeed, given the number of Nigerian academicians in foreign universities and research institutions, it is an indication that many have lost faith in Nigeria’s education sector. That faith will not be restored with the little amount voted for the sector each year. That faith will not be restored as long as the president has said precious little about where he hopes to take education in the next few years and what he hopes Nigeria can achieve technologically and scientifically with a revived education sector. The Dr Babalakin-led committee will of course hammer out palliatives to secure industrial peace in the universities. But the fundamental change Nigeria needs and the funds to drive it can only come from the president’s vision. Sadly, there is absolutely no indication that such real change is afoot. That kind of change can only come from the inside of the leader, a leader intent on daring great and mighty things, a leader who can see far into the future, not a leader cajoled by restive unions whose perspectives on the subject can sometimes prove too abstract for him.