The story seemed to have been conjured out of thin air and yet received prominent treatment in some major news media. A report that 38 universities in the country had astronomically hiked their fees as a result of poor funding by the federal and state governments was attributed to Dr. Deji Omole, chairman of the University of Ibadan Chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Dr. Omole was alleged to have issued a statement to that effect in Abuja. The understandably furious Unibadan ASUU boss vehemently denied either being in Abuja or issuing any press statement to that effect in the Federal Capital Territory or elsewhere. According to Dr. Omole, “Therefore, I do not know the sources of the figures quoted in the report. ASUU is a well-coordinated union, which will carry out incontrovertible research and present this to the public”.
Under the inspiration and leadership of very courageous and brilliant intellectuals such as Professor Dipo Fashina, Professor Biodun Jeyifo, the late Professor Festus Iyayi, the late Professor Eskor Toyo, Professor Assisi Assobie, the late Professor Abubakar Mommoh, Professor Attahiru Jega to name a few, ASUU embarked on prolonged strikes particularly under the period of visionless military rule to wrestle for better funding of higher education. Although successive military dictatorships tried to portray ASUU as fighting for the selfish pecuniary interests of its members, the truth was that the organization’s struggle was largely informed by the larger vision of a qualitatively transformed national public university system. Beyond this, ASUU achieved the feat of linking up with the trade union movement and civil society groups to contribute immensely to the struggle that resulted in the retreat of the military from the public space and the birth of the current democratic dispensation.
Although it achieved undeniable gains in terms of incrementally better funding of public universities, ASUU’s frequent strikes also created problems of its own for the public tertiary institutions. In most cases, students knew when they would be admitted but could not determine when they would graduate. It was not unusual for students to spend close to a decade for a four or five year course. Those parents with the means withdrew their children either to local private universities that charged exorbitant fees or to even more costly institutions abroad. Children of the poor had no choice but bear their fate with equanimity looking philosophically to the face of God.
To worsen matters, successive governments often observed their protracted agreements with ASUU in the breach necessitating a vicious spiral of never-ending strikes. Beyond this, it became obvious that the challenges confronting the universities had become so intricate and complex that simply throwing more money at them would hardly make the desired impact. As a cerebral organization of thinkers, I believe that ASUU is currently re-evaluating its strategies with a view to seeing how the public universities can be liberated from their current state of utter decay to become truly transformational institutions beyond the instrumentality of strikes.
Under the current All Progressives Congress (APC) dispensation and largely because of President Muhammadu Buhari’s personal antipathy to corruption, the sheer venality and insane greed of the country’s ruling class has been exposed as never before. Not just the universities but the entire educational system, the military, the media, the private sector, federal and state government workers, critical public infrastructure and basic social services have been negatively affected by the largely corruption-induced current economic crisis. The country squandered the oil fortune it made for about five years under the Jonathan administration and is now practically broke with the drastic drop in international oil prices.
Happily, however, the heavy fiscal haemorrhage due to industrial scale looting of the treasury hitherto witnessed under the previous administration has been substantially stanched. Concrete efforts are being made to diversify the economy from overdependence on oil to agriculture and solid minerals while infrastructure is being frenetically upgraded to enhance economic capacity. But there can be no easy route to Eldorado. As efforts are being made to remedy the damage of the past, strikes cannot be a viable option for workers to resolve their grievances either in the public or private sectors and this does not exclude the universities.
It appears to me that the ASUU leadership is very much aware of this stark reality. Unfortunately, the non-academic unions of the universities seem blissfully oblivious of this fact. At the University of Ibadan, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) have just ended a three day strike to force the university authorities to pay arrears of their ‘earned allowances’. The situation is worse at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), now renamed after the late General Adeyinka Adebayo. There, the three non-academic unions have been on a protracted strike over sundry issues including alleged victimization, intimidation and non-payment of their hazard allowances; grievances over promotion issues and alleged refusal to release workers’ cooperative funds causing the latter untold hardship. These are, of course, legitimate issues on which workers are right to express their displeasure within constitutional bounds.
However, it would appear the non-academic unions at the university went beyond the limits of industrial relations in pursuing their perceived rights. In an attempt to shut down the institution and achieve a total strike, some union leaders reportedly beat up and injured some lecturers on campus who were ready to teach. They reportedly disrupted a meeting of the governing council of the university, which was forced to hold at a location off the premises. The governing council directed that the union leaders be issued queries. Rather than defend themselves, the unions demanded the immediate withdrawal of the queries and the dissolution of panels allegedly set up to investigate the workers. The university management took the next logical step of suspending the affected union leaders. Anyone who knows the antecedents of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Kayode Soremekun, would know he is a veritable radical himself. But then, the exercise of industrial relations rights must not be allowed to completely erode authority and result in a descent to anarchy. The excesses of the non-academic unions at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, must in my view be immediately brought to an end. Matters are certainly not helped by the alleged partisan interference of the Ekiti State government in the affair.
In the wake of the FUOYE crisis, the VC, Professor Soremekun had said that his greatest concern is how to develop the university and expand its capacity. A major step in this direction was incidentally taken this week when a three day conference held at the university with the objective of equipping young scholars with the capacity to write proposals that attract research grants from the best universities across the world. This project, the product of a visit by Professor Soremekun to the African Peacebuilding Network (APN) program of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York, in May this year is the beginning of a collaborative relationship between the two institutions.
Professor Soremekun believes that this kind of initiative will enhance high quality research and academic excellence at FUOYE that will have a positive impact on the university’s global intellectual appeal and financial viability to the benefit of all stakeholders including the non-academic unions. The conference was preceded by a seminal, thought provoking lecture titled ‘The Challenge of Peace and Security in Times of Recession’, delivered by Professor Emeritus of Political Science, John Ayoade of the University of Ibadan. As a follow up to this programme, Professor Sola Omotola, Head of FUOYE’s Department of Political Science, says that 30 young scholars drawn from across West Africa will soon undergo training at the institution on how to conduct quality research that addresses peace and security threat in Africa as well as suggesting paths to peace building.
Beyond its present crisis, FUOYE is clearly set for great things ahead.
It is time to look beyond strikes as the cure all for the myriad travails of the Nigerian university
