We don’t need another ASUU strike

SOMETHING is fundamentally wrong with governance in Nigeria to the extent that the more the form and faces around it change, the more things look the same. Whether it is the autocratic military rule or democratically elected government, the return on investment for the people of Nigeria is usually a flat rate. Take, for instance, the scenario in the days of the military. Anytime a regime wanted to increase fuel prices or what they usually called fuel subsidy removal, they first created weeks of scarcity that came with dehumanising effects. After recording several deaths, with many landing in hospitals, the new price is slammed in the face of the weary citizens and they are left to leak their wounds. Life invariably goes on. Like the military, the civilian governments that have come on board since 1999 have equally not found any euthanistic model of injecting the poisonous dosage of fuel scarcity. Each time it plans to increase fuel prices, it dries up supply and leaves the citizens scampering for the little drops. That happened as late as April and early this month and then we saw filling stations topping their already hiked prices with between N10 and N20 per litre, majorly in the southern states.

Another sector where the military style of governance has continued to reign supreme is the education sector. For more than 30 years, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government have been locked in a cat-and-mouse relationship. It was clear that the military detested the “big grammar” with which ASUU couches its demands and it gave no damn each time they threatened to embark on strike. The trend has continued whether it is the Khaki-wearing officers or those who parade in flowing agbada. The immediate past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari even upped the government’s indignation against ASUU by seizing its eight months salaries and refusing to enter into any meaningful negotiations with the egg heads. It eventually registered a rival body in a bid to neutralise ASUU’s potency.

Somehow, the administration of President Bola Tinubu, in an attempt to find a rapprochement between it and ASUU, paid part of the eight months salary seized by Buhari. But it failed to go further than that. It dissolved the governing councils of the universities and kept mute afterward.  After months of awaiting a redress, ASUU went back to its usual strategy by threatening to down tools if the government would not reconstitute the governing councils and pay the seized salaries of its members.

In a May 13 communication by the President of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke, the union reeled out other demands to include termination of the unending grip of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information Systems(IPPIS), renegotiation of the 2009 agreement, appropriate funding of the universities, an end to the proliferation of universities, as well as the need to address core curriculum and minimum academic standard among others.

ASUU’s statement read in part: “Compatriots of the Press, we feel saddened that the Federal Government has still not paid the backlog of the Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) which was part of the allowances captured in the 2023 National Budget for Federal Universities. The December 2020 MoA between FGN and ASUU reaffirmed our understanding of mainstreaming of EAA into lecturers’ salaries while the next tranche of the allowances was to be paid in 2021. However, the scheduled payment was not only aborted, the mainstreaming EAA as of 2022 has remained a mirage in federal and most state universities.

“In addition, the outstanding three and half months’ salaries withheld during the preventable 2022 nationwide strike action remains unpaid to our members in the federal universities. Similarly, our colleagues in many state universities are being owed arrears of EAA, withheld salaries, third-party deductions, and other entitlements due to them. ASUU condemns this seeming disinterest of concerned authorities about these issues of life and livelihood of our members across the campuses. It will be unfortunate if the union is forced to take some unpleasant decisions to address all these lingering issues.”

The government responded last week by releasing the list of the governing councils of universities. But it is obvious that the measure is not only a far cry from the whole list of demands tabled by ASUU, it is indeed less than a drop in the ocean. If care is not taken, ASUU will once again take “some unpleasant decisions” to drive home its agitation.

What should baffle the right-thinking members of society is why governments, whether military or civilian usually decide to wait till the university lecturers pull punches and shut down the classrooms, when at the end of the day, governments usually end up taking the glory for the implementation of the well-thought-out initiatives from the lecturers. In the late 1990s, the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, the Minna-born military general closed its eyes as ASUU downed tools and closed the universities for five months just because it did not immediately see the benefits of introducing education tax, a key demand by ASUU at the time. When reason eventually prevailed, and the regime introduced the tax, its handlers celebrated the “brilliance” of the decision. Meanwhile, the students of that era had suffered the pain of having their careers delayed by five months.

Even though it is yet to chart a new course thus far in the management of labour-related matters in its one year in the saddle, the government of President Bola Tinubu needs to showcase a different story going forward. A little over a week ago, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu announced that the President has approved a gradual payment of the N3.3 trillion power sector debts. That’s a huge leap forward for that sector. I am certain that the three-and-a-half months withheld salary of ASUU members cannot come anywhere near the N3 trillion mark and that means the money ASUU members are asking for is what our people would call “chicken change.” The incumbent government needs to convince us all that it is ready to renew the hope of the university lecturers and that of the stakeholders in the education sector as a whole by doing what it should to prevent ASUU members from adopting “some unpleasant decisions,” thus averting the looming ASUU strike.

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