ASUU, rethink your strategy

THE Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has commenced a month’s warning strike to force the Federal Government to implement the Memorandum of Action (MoA) set in 2020. The content of the MoA includes funding for the revitalisation of public universities, earned academic allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS), the renegotiation of the 2009 ASUU-FGN Agreement and the inconsistencies in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). The union had previously embarked on numerous strikes since 2011 over some of these issues. The last strike was in 2020 and it lasted for nine months, a period equivalent to a whole academic session. Between 1999 and 2020, ASUU went on strike 17 times for a total of 1,450 days. This means that ASUU went on strike every 15 months and for a total of almost four full calendar years out of 21 years. Indeed, ASUU is currently perceived by many to have taken strikes as its vocation.

The weapon of strike has obviously lost its vitality.  The persisting nature of the issues in dispute shows that the series of strikes have not yielded the expected results. We think it is time for ASUU to rethink its strategy. It is certainly not working to resolve the issues in dispute, neither has it improved conditions in the public university system. Instead of saving the university system from “imminent collapse”, it has had the opposite effect of putting the universities under undue stress. It has been disruptive of university calendars and has gradually eroded the quality of service delivery in the universities. It has detracted from academic performance and the rating of the country’s universities.  These issues and others have become a source of conflict within the union, leading to a breakaway faction.  Another academic union, the Congress of University Academics (CONUA), has been registered because of the ensuing schism. Incessant strikes and their disruptive consequences have eroded public support and sympathy for ASUU’s causes.

We urge ASUU to exercise more restraint in embarking on industrial actions. It must also take positive steps to ensure that the university system is not put under undue stress as it deals with the Federal Government.  This means that ASUU members need to devise more innovative measures rather than total and comprehensive strikes to put pressure on the government. ASUU should be wary of calling for a “comprehensive, total and indefinite strike” as a follow-up to the ongoing warning strike. As members of the union know, this kind of strike will surely reverse the gains already made in the other aspects of the agreement that have been implemented.

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While recognising the role the Federal Government has played in the decay and instability of the university system, we call on ASUU to look beyond strikes in forcing the hands of the Federal Government. It is necessary and in the national interest to protect public universities and keep them fit-for-purpose as essential institutions for national development and progress. As intellectuals, it is the responsibility of ASUU members to devise new ways to address the university system’s perennial problems and get the government to play its proper role effectively.

We call on the government to move from an adversarial position to collaborate with ASUU and seek common grounds to call off the current strike and seek accommodation in the national interest. The problems in the universities have become too complex and complicated to be addressed by means of strikes. They call for fresh thinking and new strategies.