As political parties press on towards the 2023 polls, not many issues will assume as much prominence as the suspended Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) eight-month strike. While the strike lasted, it threatened to overshadow the coming polls, particularly the presidential election, because its lack of resolution was already being interpreted as a reflection of either the incompetence or gross insensitivity of the All Progressives Congress (APC). When the strike was finally suspended after the intervention and negotiations driven by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, there was relief all round.
However, the strike ‘ended’ in a hail of legal obfuscations, balkanisation of university and medical unions, and enormous pressures brought to bear upon the university teachers. But other than the assurances of Hon Gbajabiamila who insisted on being taken for his word, and respect for the rule of law since the courts had ruled against the union, there were no definitive agreements underpinning the cessation of strike. There was a sense in which, flowing from Hon Gbajabimila’s intervention, it was understood that on resumption of work, ASUU members would be paid half of their salary arrears, and the other half paid before December. There was no indication the union would be paid half of October salary, not talk of prorating the salary, or abandoning the previous seven months pay on the excuse that the teachers did not work.
When the October salaries were paid, it turned out that the teachers got half-pay, or as the Labour minister, Chris Ngige, said tongue-in-cheek, prorated salary. It was clear that Dr Ngige, who malevolently inspired the balkanisation of ASUU shortly before the strike was suspended, felt humiliated that an agreement of sorts had been reached between the legislature and the unions, while his ministry became a spectator. Cynically, the minister insisted he did not direct the Finance ministry to pay half salary, but only informed the relevant authorities, consequent upon the advice of the Education ministry and education inspectors in tertiary institutions, that ASUU resumed work on such and such a date.
There was no doubt before the strike was suspended that Dr Ngige had personalised the ASUU fight. He resented the teachers’ obduracy, and he took the disagreement personally as a clash of wills which he was determined to win. In his mind, he no longer saw the issue as a national problem needing a lot of give-and-take in order to get the best for the country, but as a challenge to his ministerial power. He also simply ignored the government’s longstanding disrespect for agreements reached with the union since 2009, a disrespect he did not think had proved costly, provocative and disruptive. Worse, citing some arcane International Labour Organisation (ILO) rules and regulations, he also sidelined the Education ministry. Much worse is the fact that somehow he got the presidency to back his retrogressive policy of ‘penalising’ the teachers for the strike.
But Dr Ngige is not standing for elections, nor is he the president. Some stakeholders recognised that the strike and the obstinacy of the administration had political and electoral implications and did their best to get it resolved. The resolutions were not perfect, indeed were tentative and vague, with Hon Gbajabiamila even seeming to eat his word, but they prepared the groundwork for fuller and more definitive resolutions. Nigerians expected that an elected government in the middle of campaigns to retain power would be more conciliatory. But they overestimate the administration. Feigning patriotism and pretending to save tertiary education, Dr Ngige and the government have, however, worsened the crisis. ASUU has been caught between and betwixt, and the students, the youths whose future the administration treats with such crass levity, will suffer enormous losses.
The administration has not put forward a counterproposal to reform education, nor has it shown concern that its attitude to the whole crisis could prove politically costly. It will be impossible for them to prove that they are not sabotaging themselves or preparing grounds for voter backlash. It is not to their credit that the combative Dr Ngige had been given ample room to personalise the ASUU fight. Why the Federal Executive Council has been reticent over this matter is inexplicable. Do they associate with the galling determination of the Labour ministry to stymie the future of the youths?
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Hon Gbajabiamila may already feel frustrated that the good work he and his team had done to rekindle hope among youths and restore confidence in government is being thrown to the dogs. He will of course do his best to salvage the tentative agreement he reached, on trust, with ASUU, even though his considerable equivocations indicate the appalling resistance he is meeting at the presidency. He has invested too much of his person and reputation in the deal to stand idly by as Dr Ngige and other retrogressive and reactionary politicians and bureaucrats sabotage the agreement. The Labour minister is a bitter man, and the administration itself is shockingly unable to grasp the enormity of the crisis and its consequence for Nigerian youths.
Whether the administration likes it or not, the ASUU crisis will become an issue in the campaigns, and sometime in the future, the president will be asked whether it makes sense to blame any other person, including ASUU, for allowing the strike to last for so long, and then finally sabotaging the resolution. It is not clear what his answers will be, or whether those answers will be convincing, but analysts and interviewers will wonder why the administration failed to recognise that in the end the buck stops at the president’s table. Historians will not write that ASUU called out a strike; they will write that the Muhammadu Buhari administration did not have an education programme, and when university teachers nudged him in the right direction, also write that he seemed to trifle with the crisis. They will write that his administration, not even the cantankerous Dr Ngige whose raison d’être seems to be to fight unions, stood arms akimbo as doctors and nurses emigrated in droves from Nigeria, leaving the country’s healthcare sector in tatters.
If federal ministers will not stir themselves to put Dr Ngige in his place and coax the distracted president into doing what is right for education and the youths, ensuring that both understand that this is not a battle of wills, then Hon Gbajabiamila and his team, perhaps with less equivocation this time, should work assiduously to salvage the deal. The team should not pull punches in directly accusing the opinionated minister. There is little ASUU can do between now and the end of the administration next May. Their best hope is not in embarking on constant battles with the administration, any administration, as indeed they have indicated; their best hope is to ensure that the next administration will be one that earnestly cares about education, one which will not allow a petty-minded and pugnacious minister to hold everybody hostage.
Buhari swears on legacies
In his address to members of the Legislative Mentorship Initiative (LMI) who paid a learning visit to the State House in Abuja, Chief of Staff to the president, Ibrahim Gambari, remarked that President Muhammadu Buhari would leave legacies of infrastructural development and free and fair polls, among other achievements. Prof. Gambari represented the president, and obviously had the authority to quote him, especially given the fact that the president had repeatedly alluded to those legacies.
It may be significant in these parts for an outgoing president to leave a legacy of credible elections, seeing how important it is for the consolidation of democracy, but, really, free and fair polls should be taken for granted, and should hardly qualify for a legacy. And as for infrastructural development, while President Buhari has done enormous work in that sector, the country will wonder at what cost.
Finally, the professor also spoke glowingly and proudly of Nigeria’s population figure which is projected in 2050 to be the third highest in the world, after China and India. How he did not sound disturbed by that projection is difficult to explain. With the current land mass, a significant part of which has become arid, thereby putting migratory and disruptive pressures on the rest of the country, Nigeria will in actual fact become a pressure pot, an oven of social, economic and political discontent and disturbances. Without a corresponding action to limit population growth and impose innovative and stabilising management of politics and the economy, it would be chasing shadows to talk of one great and indivisible country. Perhaps the professor knew these pitfalls but chose to gloss over them.