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ASUU strike and the progressive damage to tertiary education

THE recent decision by the Academic Staff Union of Nigeria University (ASUU) to extend the four-week strike it called on February 14, 2022 is yet another lethal blow to tertiary education in Nigeria. Without doubt, the continuation of the strike would result in further disruption of the efforts of many concerned parents, who have fought tooth and nail to invest in no small measure to ensure their children acquire quality tertiary education, as a first step to contributing their quota to national development. 

What is at stake is not just the future of education but  the future of Nigeria, with respect to its capacity to produce the human resource required to take the country to its rightful place in the comity of nations. At a time when the rest of the world has long accorded primacy to knowledge and innovation, Nigeria cannot afford to remain a backbencher on account of its lack of seriousness in addressing critical sectors such as tertiary education.

 The ongoing round of industrial disputes between ASUU and the Federal Government is disheartening. The situation is unacceptable because those directly impacted are the youth of the nation. There can be no mistaking the fact that the future belongs to the youth and on their shoulders rest the future development of the country. As a consequence, if the government fails to address the lingering issues in the tertiary education sector, it is not only education that fails; the entire future of the country would be put in jeopardy. 

It is therefore not surprising that even on the African continent, no Nigerian university features among the ten top-ranked universities. For Nigeria as a continental giant, it should ideally have at least three universities ranked in the top ten ivory towers on the continent. This has not been the case because perennial underfunding of university education, the abysmally low investment in the sector and several other anomalies have hobbled the sector.

At a time when other countries of the world are investing massively in education as the pathway to human capacity development, it is disconcerting that in Nigeria, constant squabbles and industrial actions disrupting the educational calendar have become the order of the day. Those who pass through the university system are supposed to acquire certain skills and competencies needed to contribute to the progress of the country. If they however spend much of the time meant to acquire such skills in waiting perpetually for the government and the lecturers to end their face-offs, how would they fare and how would they be able to compete with their peers around the world, with such disrupted and interrupted university education? 

As would be seen in the many cases of Nigerian students who were caught up in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, their sojourn to the Eastern European country was in quest of quality education. If the Nigerian tertiary education system was of comparative quality, it is apparent that many of those who had to bear the exorbitant travel costs and school fees may not have travelled so far just to get education.

If the recurring squabbles between ASUU and the Federal Government are not completely stopped, the already low level of confidence in the Nigerian tertiary education system, would translate to a total collapse. That, in itself would amount to putting the welfare, well-being and overall development of Nigerian youth in the limbo. In the light of these realities assailing Nigeria’s tertiary education, it is time for the government to begin taking the country and its people seriously. The main issues, which have constituted sticky points in the discussions between ASUU and the Federal Government, should be quickly looked at and decisively addressed to enable longsuffering Nigeria students and their parents heave a sigh of relief.

 It is not helpful that the government and the union have been endlessly engaging in back and forth lobbing of blames over which of the parties is at fault. While ASUU has continued to insist that its demands as contained in the renegotiated ASUU-FGN Agreement of 2020 have yet to be met, the Federal Government has repeatedly claimed that all the demands made by ASUU as a precondition for calling off the strikes have been met. This position of the government has been countered by the union, which has insisted that the government failed to satisfactorily address all the issues raised in the 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) within the four-week strike period. 

One of the sticky points is the question of the payment system to be deployed for in the universities. Lecturers in universities have been at loggerheads with the government over the use of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPS), which they (lecturers) have rejected due to alleged glitches, which they claim results in arbitrary deduction of their salaries and allowances.

The university teachers therefore developed an alternative known as the University Transparency and Accountability Solutions (UTAS) to replace  IPPIS. Although the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) recently claimed the UTAS failed integrity tests, ASUU tried to debunk the claim by showing tests results indicating that UTAS had passed between 77 and 85 per cent. The union has queried why software that scored almost 80 per cent would be dubbed a failure. 

The other demands of the union include the payment of earned academic allowances, revitalisation fund for universities, funding of state universities, and release of white papers on visitation panels sent to the universities. 

ASUU strike has become an annual ritual in Nigeria. Funding has always been at the centre of the crisis. And when it happens, attention is directed at government without interrogation of how university education in other parts of the world, especially the developed countries, is funded. Are the universities in Nigeria administered and run the way universities in other climes are run? Do universities, even public universities, in those areas rely heavily on government for funding? What is the recruitment process for administrators and lecturers? Is it such that can provide the requisite capacity and competences to drive the universities not just as centres of routine learning but centres of innovation?

We must also find out the following: Do students in universities in other climes pay peanuts as fees? Why are the private universities in Nigeria thriving and public universities are not? Are there no other funding arrangements like scholarships, grants, bursaries, campus jobs and other forms of sponsorship that can allow students of all backgrounds to pursue their educational goals without necessarily compromising appropriate financial streams and constraining universities from funding their operations? What about consultancies and innovative ventures which should be veritable revenue streams for the universities? 

We have more questions than answers but we must still ask the following questions: are universities in Nigeria doing enough to deserve the perennial cry for improved and increased funding? Is there anything to show that even what has been given are being properly utilised? Are there monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to gauge the performance of universities vis a vis the level of funding? What is the quality of products churned out from our public universities? What is so peculiar about the university system that the payment system for its staff should be considered differently? It should not just be what ASUU is demanding, it should also be about the output of its members. This is about tertiary institutions that should be centres of innovation excellence and not charity homes with a sense of entitlement.    

We must be strategic and realistic if we are to find lasting solutions to the problems of our public institutions. Tertiary education is not cheap anywhere in the world. While government is being pressured to look into the issues raised by ASUU, interrogation of the aforementioned issues regarding university operations must go apace. We should address both the wandering chicken and the scavenging hawk if lasting solutions are to be found to this routine malaise. While it is critical for government to look into genuine issues raised by ASUU, the union must also assess its contributions to the system and more especially consider the implications of its now routine pastime on the immediate and larger beneficiaries of its services.

While there might be a certain degree of merit in some of its demands, the routine disruptive action that has become like an annual festival is doing more harm than good to university education. What this implies is that the union needs to think outside the box to evolve more sustainable means of running the university system and, where absolutely necessary, find other less disruptive alternatives in the quest to actualise its demands.  

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