Nation Without Universities by Sunny Awhefeada(PhD) When the ongoing industrial action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) commenced on July 1 2013, not many Nigerians thought that it was going to be as long drawn as it has turned out to be. They reasoned that President Goodluck Jonathan would use the opportunity to shore up his waning popularity by immediately implementing the agreement whose non-implementation four years after it was signed by the Federal Government (FG) led to the strike. Yet, there were other discerning Nigerians who concluded that the government in its cavalier character might not be serious in resolving the crisis. They believe that those who rule Nigeria gave up on the populace a long time ago and as such are not interested in their wellbeing. That is the reason why the education and health sectors, electricity and all public infrastructures are comatose. Thus while the masses are held down by grinding poverty occasioned by grossly inhuman government policies, the ruling class and their comprador buccaneer business elite fly out of the country to treat leg pains, headache and rashes just as they fancy sending their children to schools in London, America, South Africa, Ghana and of late Gabon, Togo and Republic of Benin! Today, Nigeria, the self-acclaimed giant of Africa, the most populous black nation in the world and its sixth largest producer of crude oil, is a nation without universities. After about one hundred years of existence, fifty-three of it as an independent polity, Nigerias development remains arrested by leadership autism. All her public universities are under lock and key because those who run the nation are agents of neo- imperial principalities, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) whose avowed aim is to hold down the developing world. The issues at stake in the ongoing strike are well known. It is all about revamping the universities that have degenerated into an unacceptable level. It was for this reason that ASUU embarked on a strike in 2009. That strike produced an agreement which the Federal Government signed and vowed to implement and even review for enhancement by 2012. However, three years after, in 2012, the FG showed no intention of implementing the agreement not to even mention its review. ASUU wrote letters to remind the FG on the urgent need to implement the agreement as the condition of the ailing universities had become critical. The FG gave no heed. Then in January 2012, ASUU went on a one week warning strike and threatened to embark on a full scale industrial action after that. Then the FG instituted a NEEDS assessment committee to evaluate what it would take to revamp the universities. The revelations were startling and they were enough to declare an emergency in the universities and send a supplementary budget to that effect to the National Assembly or at most make special provision in the 2013 budget. The NEEDS assessment report requested the FG to commit N1.3 Trillion to the public universities (both state and federally owned) in four years as follows: N100 Billion in 2012, N400 Bill on in 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively. The details were contained in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which again the FG signed with a promise to immediately implement. ASUU waited in good faith for the whole of 2012. It made entreaties to the FG. It used different influential networks of those who have the ears Aso Rock to contact FG so that it can implement the MOU. The 2013 budget came and there was no boost in the allocation to Education. In fact, what was allocated was a miserable 7 percent instead of the 26 percent recommended by UNESCO! The year 2013 began and ASUU didnt relent in reminding the FG. Then the months went by: January, February, March, April, May, June and finally July. Nothing was done. The FGs insensitivity had become provocative and only the last resort of industrial action was left for ASUU. Nigerian workers get nothing from government without first going on strike. In embarking on the current strike, ASUU took cognisance of the plight of university students and their parents who are anxious for them to graduate. ASUU does sympathize with them. But then, the strike is about the students and the future of Nigeria. It is no longer news that quality learning took flight off our universities a long time ago and that they have become grossly deficient in the production of human capital! All our universities are grossly understaffed. That is why we no longer have tutorials as in the days of old. Many universities have no lecture theatres. Many have neither laboratories nor libraries. The halls of residence are no better than poultry houses. Many campuses appear like refugee camps and very sadly the salaries of Nigerian academics remain the lowest in the world! Any wonder then that no Nigerian university has made the first five thousand universities in the world in the last ten years? Yet, Nigeria is so rich to the extent that each of her 109 senators earns more than the American President annually! ASUU is on strike for the sake of Nigeria, todays and future generations. All patriotic Nigerians must range on the side of the striking lecturers in this onerous task of redeeming the universities and the future of Nigeria. If Nigeria must make progress as a country it can only do so from the universities. The FG has embarked on a string of measures to blackmail and intimidate ASUU. It has invoked a No Work No Pay rule. It has also hired some misguided touts it called students, market women and cobblers it clothed in coats and called young academics to speak against ASUU in the media. These are merely diversionary. The FG should do what is right by implementing the agreement it signed. President Jonathan sounded uninformed when he spoke about the strike in the last Presidential Media Chat. He says there is no way lecturers in state and federal universities can earn the same income. He forgot that there is one university system in Nigeria regulated by one body known as the National Universities Commission. He also forgot that one body known as JAMB conducts entrance examination for the universities and that the two bodies are answerable to him. It was convenient for him to forget that all elected public office holders and political appointees in Nigeria earn a unified salary. He also forget that Nigeria runs a unified minimum wage system. I think he should come down from his high horse and implement the agreement. That is the only honourable thing to do. He claimed that the strike had become political. Then he should implement the agreement to score a major political point! Madam Okonjo-Wahala, IMF arch-stooge, says there is no money, but only last month the FG crowed that it recovered N530 Billion from contracts. Again, the FG is proposing to build a centenary village that will cost over N1 Trillion! These monies are far in excess of what the MOU prescribed for the revival of our universities. The FG should plough them into the system so that we can have our universities back and then all Nigerians can shout, as we do in DELSU, ovwiereooo! Comrade Awhefeada teaches literature at the Delta State University, Abraka.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:28:26 +0000
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