Dear leaders and members of the National Assembly, kindly permit me to address you, directly, on the protracted strike embarked upon by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
If you grew up in the early 1970s in Ibadan, Oyo State and had first-hand knowledge of the serenity and beauty of the Government College Ibadan (GCI), the Queens School, and the African Church Grammar School, all in the Apata Ganga area of the city and you take a look at the carcasses that all three have become today, you will most likely understand why the big government structure that currently feeds Nigerian universities will yield only one result: Disaster.
The story is not different for virtually all secondary schools across the country before oil boom made our leaders drunk with more money than brains. The last time I visited the African Church Grammar School and beheld the decrepit buildings, the broken down chairs and tables, and the football field that had become bare of grass, I wept. Anyone who lived at the neighbouring Odo Ona area, who also witnessed the beauty of GCI and Queens School will equally shed tears at Paradise Lost.
Simply put: The big government structure that we currently operate is a sure recipe for disaster. Expecting government at the center in the state to effectively run those schools, and the nearly 1000 others strewn across the state, is a will-o-the-wisp.
The challenge is exactly why university education cannot, and should not, be shouldered by the government as is currently the case in Nigeria, and is a major cause of angst by ASUU: The government at the center can never effectively fund the provision of chalkboards, chairs and tables, earned allowances, and the sundry other needs of university teachers and the non-academic staff.
That is one fact that the federal executive, the legislators and the ASUU must come to terms with. If we truly want a competitive university sector, the government and the teachers must agree that there is a need for a rethink on funding.
How can universities have the kind of funding that they need but which will not cost parents and students an arm and a leg, yet free funds for the government to enable it meet other national needs?
Nigeria must borrow a leaf from colonial Britain, the source of our formal education system.
The executive arm of government has been in the eye of the storm over the crisis but, truth be told, the fundamental solution to the crisis lies in the hands of the legislature.
Nigeria’s universities are a product of law, hence a fundamental rethinking of their funding must be put at the doorstep of lawmakers.
The solution to this debacle is not necessarily more allocation from the national coffers but a creative way to make more money available to the universities and still leave ample resources to meet other areas of national need like health, infrastructure, defence and internal policing.
No one needs the gift of clairvoyance to predict, correctly, that whoever becomes Nigeria’s President in 2023 will face a similar unrest, to be championed once again by both academic and non-academic unions.
As it was from military rule to civil administrations since 1999, allocations from oil will only scratch the problems of university funding on the surface.
Profligacy on the part of governments, the Muhammadu Buhari administration not excluded, is provocative enough: The government that claims not to have funds to meet the needs of universities, has continued with the ruinous path of previous administrations, perhaps on a grander scale.
The Buhari aspirant for the highest office in the land in 2015 who promised to drastically reduce the number of aircraft in the presidential fleet and cut cost has not only kept them – all of them – seven and a half years on, but also gone ahead on wasteful spending during his medical tourism to the United Kingdom. His wife the First Lady is a permanent resident of the United Arab Emirates. Who picks the bill, you may want to ask?
Also, ministers have continued to enjoy stupendous perks while you, our National Assembly members, live like royals on national wealth. So, why would university workers, as well as those of other tertiary institutions, not demand better pay for themselves and more funding for the academic institutions. Let’s democratize the good life, right?
Wrong. Gravely wrong.
Oil wealth is not only a vanishing source of income – because the wells that bring forth the black gold will run dry one day – but also not ours to exhaust. It is not a gift to us by our forebears but a trust that we hold, as every good parent ought to, for our children. We should devise a means to meet our needs and utilize income from the oil sector as investments to yield great wealth for generations yet unborn.
Dear legislators, what we currently do in Nigeria is to gather every month to share and deplete national accounts for the current generation to have money to pay the salaries of civil servants, commit to education and health as well as other needs.
All tiers of government then go on a binge – until next month when more money is shared or loans are obtained to enable the Federal Government and its agencies buy vehicles, pay estacodes for all sorts of journeys, while state governors buy exotic cars as gifts for traditional rulers and other forms of mundane expenditure. All with no thought for the future.
Dear legislators, it is apposite to call your attention to what other countries are doing to put quality education and health within the reach of all citizens.
I often wonder why Nigeria chose to learn almost every good thing from colonial Britain but deliberately ignored how that country has ensured that education and health are within the reach of all citizens.
Dear legislators, kindly permit me to suggest that you commission a study of the National Health Insurance scheme in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. With UK home students paying an average of four thousand pounds yearly and foreign students between 10,000 pounds and 20,000 pounds, it is a wonder that Nigerian students pay about N100,000 in Nigerian universities. So, how will the institutions have funds to pay competitive salaries to teachers and other categories of workers? Where will the universities get the money to equip and modernize libraries and laboratories? Funding from Father Christmas government?
Should Nigerian universities charge far more than they currently do, to boost income and enable them meet basic needs? Yes. But should parents have to look for an average of N1 million yearly for tuition fees? Hell, No!
Dear legislators, this is where the need to study how other countries have use the National Insurance scheme to creatively generate funds yet not make parents lose an arm and a leg in the process. If Lagos, for instance, could be said to have about 10 million working adults and all of them pay N1000 each into an insurance scheme monthly, the state will generate N100 billion monthly. Replicate that across the country and each state will have more than enough by the end of the year to raise the standards of education in the country.
Add to that the current stupendous money in the coffers of the Education Trust Fund (ETF), a brainchild of ASUU, there should be little problem raising the standards of infrastructure in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions and remuneration of both the academic and non-academic workers.
Dear legislators, add to this the practice in colonial Britain that home students benefit from this scheme only as loans repayable on a long-term basis. That way, we will not only have an education system that works for our citizens but also one that will attract foreign students and academic staff.
The ball is in your court, dear legislators.
Olujimi is a former editor of Compass newspaper
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