Professor Abba Gumel is an award winning and renowned Professor of Computational Mathematics who teaches at the University of Manitoba. He expresses his displeasure at the ongoing ASUU-FG face-off. The Canada-based professor, among other things, calls for a general restructuring of the Nigerian university system and favours a ban on the ASUU. Excerpts: Funding universities Universities should simply raise the funds they need to hire (and retain) quality academics, then there will be no need for any strike. The current model of varsities relying almost exclusively on what they get from the Federal Government is terribly flawed and not sustainable. This does not happen in serious nations. Harvard’s endowment as of last year was about $30 billion - which is almost the size of Nigeria’s annual budget. The hegemony of the national union of lecturers The culture of nation-wide university strike must be abolished too. The ASUU should be banned. Academics should have local unions - to address local matters – as it is done in developed nations; this is probably why it is unheard of in developed nations to have nationwide closure of universities. Education is a serious business. Serious academics and nations do not remotely consider the possibility of nationwide closure of the highest centres of learning. In the West, academics in a particular campus can go on a strike if they fail to reach agreement with the university management, but this is a local issue which is often resolved within a few days or weeks, through an independent arbitration process; and never translates into a nationwide strike. Let Buhari or any other serious and competent Nigerian be President, and I shall offer myself free to run education in the country and folks will see real, courageous, bold, fearless and innovative yet practicable reform. Restructuring the university system The entire model for university education has to change. Campuses must be autonomous although the Federal and state governments have to continue to make some contributions to them. Universities must raise the funds they need via tuition fees, research grants, endowments, etc. to run their programs effectively. Each campus should have its local union e.g., Usman Danfodio University Faculty Association, whose only role is to, first and foremost, help ensure quality academic standards on campus that is, ensure that the academics are given the incentives, teaching and learning materials they need and so forth. Further, they must promote the interest of their members on issues to do with promotion, human rights, incentives, etc. In cases of disputes between the Faculty Association and the university management, an independent arbitrator (often a highly placed member of the local community) is appointed and the ruling of the arbitrator is binding by law. This is what happens in serious nations and serious universities; that’s why you never heard of shutting down campuses in any developed nation). Public education, like public health, is a serious business. It is an immensely critical aspect of any modern nation. No serious nation allows a nation-wide strike in such immensely critical sectors. Of course, ours is not a serious nation and that’s why such strikes are essentially the norm and not the exception. Even in Africa, we are probably the only nation that condones such nonsense. The folks at ASUU are advocating for some stuff: teaching/learning resources and possibly some additional remunerations. We shouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place if those managing universities know their duties, and the governments federal, state and local make the right investment in education in a sustained basis. Soldiers started it We all know the khaki boys basically killed education in Nigeria in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. But the ASUU folks have not justified many of the incentives they have received. Obasanjo gave them a massive -yet laudable - salary increases, and their quality and the quality of what they produced has remained decidedly low in my view. We simply do not have a culture of academic excellence in any of our public campuses. Teacher-student relationship One of the first things I tell my new graduate students is that I know a thing or two, and will share with them what I know, but when all is said and done, I expect them to be a gazillion times better than me and if not, “heads will roll”. It’s only a teacher who doesn’t know what he’s doing that blocks the progress of his students – the way Nigerian lecturers do. Academic dishonesty The same ASUU folks are running around moonlighting in many campuses! This really shocks me; and it seems only in Nigeria is this sort of thing accepted. Anyone who does this - that is, you are employed in one university and run around teaching in other universities without permission from their employers - risks losing their job in serious nations. So, essentially our academics are business men and women seemingly more interested in making money than building and sustaining a world-class culture of academic excellence. The blame game For me, everyone is to blame, ranging from the governments for not making the right investments, the “academics” for not focusing on building a culture of academic excellence and the university administrators for not making their campuses financially sustainable. That’s why the entire system needs a complete overhaul. An overhaul to ensure only quality academics and vice chancellors are hired, and the governments make the right investments - at least 30% of annual budget in line with UNESCO’s recommendation. We are in a serious mess, and we require serious people to get us out of it. We cannot move forward as a nation if our education system remains in this dilapidated -actually failed - state. Nations that have succeeded have many things in common, one of which is the utmost seriousness they consider anything and everything pertaining to public education. I should add that we must not continue to kid ourselves that the federal government alone can effectively fund education - this never happens in any of the developed nations. All stakeholders (industries, parents, states and local governments, etc.) have to do their bits. Further, varsities have to charge appropriate tuition fees (what students pay nowadays is peanuts. We should have a student loan scheme to help students acquire quality education, as is done in the developed nations.
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 13:02:13 +0000
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