I Stand With ASUU (2)

By Dr. Muiz Banire SAN

How does a poor professor resist this kind of onslaught? The end message from the above is that where the management manages to generate any internal revenue, 70 per cent ends up in the pockets of these external administrators. Even where the university intends to apply the derived fund to augment the incomes of their staff, circulars upon circulars from the government and the National Assembly tends to suffocate and frustrate the effort.

Now addressing the statutory subvention, as little and insufficient as it is, this is both externally and internally pilfered by numerous officials. As the ‘Ogas at the top’ demand their own, so also the big boys within the university systems feed fat too. At the end of the road, nothing to show for it. Beyond this point of corruption within the system, the reality is that the government cannot solely fund the universities with the available resources. As clear as the above is, the contradiction is that the government that is struggling to support the existing universities, as one cannot use the word, ‘sustain’ in the very sense, is busy proliferating universities. Practically every month, a new set of universities is established by the government, mostly politically motivated. Where else is this done? And you still want to contend you don’t have enough funds to cater for the existing universities.

I read the suggestion of Sa’ad that the universities be completely privatized and made fee-paying institutions, while interventions such as scholarships, bursaries and other grants be made available to deserving students. Honestly, I do not ordinarily have issues with this suggestion but for the fact that most state governments that are still grappling with the payment of workers’ salaries cannot meet such obligations which remain my challenge. What the eventuality is then likely to be is the harvest of dropouts from the institutions due to impecuniosity. The worst development is that the political class has even destroyed the various bursary and scholarship schemes.

Beyond poor funding, it is now largely politicized to absorb students with political connections with little or no chance for students perceived to evolve from the homes of political opponents. The slogan, ‘man-know-man’ has crept into the administration of the schemes to the extent that brilliant students would hardly be recognized and catered for. Repositioning this as a palliative is of utmost urgency, therefore. I read the proposal from parents of university students also in terms of N10,000 support levy to the institutions; as commendable as the proposal is, coming from the concern and frustration of the parents, even where acceptable, it is a drop in the ocean that cannot make any meaningful impact.

What is required in terms of infrastructure upgrade is not a joke and far surpasses the personal levy proposed by the parents. Now, on the issue of absorption of lecturers’ salaries into the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) platform, let me confess that, other than the fact of being a payment platform through which all civil servants are to be paid, I know nothing more. While not too agreeable with Sa’ad that lecturers are not civil servants, technically, so as to be migrated to the scheme, my thought is simply an offshoot of the earlier point made on the role of the governing councils.

You cannot continue to unify the payment of lecturers across all the universities in the country. Let each council determine what is appropriate to its staff. Let lecturers then earn migration into the more competitive ones. This will be an incentive to being hardworking. To this extent, therefore, I am not in favour of the proposed migration to the IPPIS. I read the comical argument that the resistance of the ASUU to the migration to IPPIS was due to some of them teaching in other institutions.

The truth is that lecturers are presumed to be specialists that could be utilized from time to time across the country and the universe, particularly in an environment like Nigeria where there is still dearth of qualified lecturers. It is inevitable for them to be borrowed across campuses. Where this occurs, they certainly will be entitled to some form of renumeration. In virtually all the instances of this nature, it is usually part-time and not permanent appointment. For accountability’s sake, such names will still be seen on the expenses roll of the concerned university. 

Once a lecturer meets his minimum teaching hours, he is at liberty to use the remnant time productively. In fact, except if recently changed, law lecturers are permitted by law to engage in private practice to complement their works. Abuse is what is frowned at. This is the way of supplementing capacity in other universities.  The point I am, therefore, struggling to make is that it is no aberration, much less illegality, to teach in other universities on part-time basis. This issue of migration is even no more of any moment as the Federal Government has acceded to migration to University Transparency and Accountability Solution, (UTAS).

Now, coming to ASUU, most commentators in their various comments appear to be mixing up apple and oranges. ASUU is just a canopy for the lecturers and not the content of the struggle. I observe huge misconception of the issues involved in the struggle. While it cannot be discounted that welfare issues form part of the agitation, it is certainly not the only and main issue. There are so many other issues bordering on working tools, which are germane to imparting of knowledge. Unfortunately, all the issues are intertwined. Most infrastructure crucial to dissemination of knowledge to the students are lacking in our institutions.

The libraries are now shadows of themselves; classrooms are no more conducive, choked classrooms with no public address system. Anyway, there is even no electricity to power fans or air-conditioners, where they exist. Students collapse in classrooms while lecturers sweat it out. Ordinary access to information network remains a challenge as the bandwith is narrow and inefficient most times. This is even where it exists.

How much does a lecturer earn to be buying data to research? Most lecturers lack campus accommodation and have to resort to external accommodation, which is definitely unaffordable in the urban universities. Are you considering the cost of transportation? Or you want the students to be giving lecturers rides, which is a reality these days? The point being made is that there are so many other fundamental issues than welfare that are birthing the strikes. They need to be addressed. In fact, without addressing some of them, teaching is impossible, otherwise you will be imparting half-baked knowledge, which is dangerous.

But for a moment, let us even assume without conceding that it is about welfare. Don’t you need stamina to teach? Without food, can lecturers have stamina to teach? It is the same analogy of providing infrastructure without the stomach component. People need to survive to enjoy the physical infrastructure. The message is that as we address the physical infrastructure the stomach portion cannot be relegated. They are Siamese twins that must be catered for jointly. When I, therefore, come across opinions backing the ‘no work, no pay’ position of the government, I start wondering if the authors of such opinions are grounded in the facts culminating in the strike. The provisions of the Act that allows workers not to be paid when on strike is only applicable where the tools of trade are available.

In other words, it is a provision that cannot be interpreted in the abstract. The contextual and purposeful interpretation presupposes the existence of enabling working instruments and atmosphere. Where such is absent, workers, as in this instance, lecturers, cannot be held culpable. The net effect of my submission, therefore, is that lecturers are entitled to their arrears of pay as the failure to work was enabled by failure to provide teaching facilities.

The continuous subordination of the fundamental issues of trade tools is unfair and calculated to blackmail the lecturers. Now, on the issue of some lecturers engaging in private lectures in private universities, I say no law prohibits this, in so far as it does not impact their primary assignment. The danger, however, in contemporary times, particularly stemming from the threatened onslaught of the government, is that the said lecturers end up becoming permanent staff of the private universities, patronized by the children of the privileged.

Let me recall my assertion in the various interventions I have made on this subject that even where Nigeria possesses all the resources to establish universities infrastructurally, the country lacks capacity to staff them with qualified lecturers. I have no doubt in my mind that there is dearth of lecturers in the country. By this, I do not mean any available garbage but competent lecturers. Most of the star lecturers in the country today exist in the first- and second-generation universities. They remained there for this long due to the fear of uncertainty in the future of the emerging private universities. Now that there is reasonable certainty of the endurance of the private universities, star lecturers are gradually moving to the private universities. The import of this is that all the quality lecturers will eventually be attracted to the private universities, leaving the government universities with substandard lecturers.

This is the emerging scenario that have now subordinated the ranking of our universities to virtually nil. None of the global universities ranking admits any Nigerian university within the first five hundred in the global index today while only two falls within the first fifty in the African continent. 

The consequence of migration as noted above is that the best hands will now be found in the private universities which are unaffordable to the masses. Thus, while the children of the privileged continue to attend universities with quality lecturers, the children of the poor remain within the government universities with no competent staff. So, except for the talented ones, the children of the poor turn out to be half-baked and unable to access any good job, if any job at all. As I, therefore, watch the debate and the war of blackmail launched against ASUU, I weep for the masses who seem not to appreciate what is about to be foisted on them.

Threatening or proscribing ASUU is certainly not the solution as you cannot force the lecturers to work. Bad enough that we are struggling with brain drain, now we want to inflict internal ones again. The challenge I have with the advocates of call-off-the-strike campaign is that they want  to impute another patching on the system, just for us, in the next few months, to come to another cycle of crisis. For how long are we going to continue this circuit? Instead of us all resolving that we once and for all address all the fundamental issues at stake, we want to gloss over it in our usual characteristic manner.

The danger inherent in this kind of approach is that as we continue to patch the system, instead of allowing it to collapse where inevitable, if it eventually suddenly collapses, it brings with it fatalities. This is what has been playing out in the entire country. This explains why I believe that we must not allow this again to be rushed over while returning to another strike action soon. If the strike action must linger till all the issues are terminally resolved, so be it.

There are countries in which schools are shut down for months and years to enable full reform of the educational system and they most times, come out better for it. That our tertiary education system, if not the entirety of our educational system, needs urgent overhaul is an understatement.  If this opportunity now presents itself, let us take advantage of it if truly we are concerned about the quality of education the children of the poor receive, acknowledging the fact that the privileged ones are able to afford private and external university education for their children. Thus, if this is the price, we must pay to recover our universities, I honestly believe it is worth the wait.

This explains and sincerely justifies my standing with ASUU. To, therefore, bail out the university education in this country, government needs to hands off the universities to the Governing Councils and grant full autonomy to them.  It is the invasion of the hitherto enjoyed autonomy of the universities that has crippled the university system and brought it to its knees. The earlier the National Assembly distances itself also from the so-called oversight, the better for the system. Councils must, going forward, be populated with men of integrity and accountability. 

Interface between the university management and government officials must reduce while all interactions must pass through the Council. These human interactions birth nothing other than corruption, most times.  My further admonition, therefore, is that a stakeholders’ summit be convened to once and for all thrash out all the issues. Government must cease further negotiation and allow each individual Council to superintend the negotiation. It is the indiscretion of government in this regard that has triggered this strike.

Note: This article was originally published by Sune Newspaper on 08/09/2022