By Toyin Falola
From October 2nd to 5th, 2024, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will gather several of the country’s best minds in Abuja to search for “a new path to development.” I am glad to have been invited to this intellectual gathering. I look forward to listening to the Keynote Speaker, General Ishola Williams (rtd.), a thinker far more prolific and influential than me. My contribution to the three-day event will be how existing theories fail to explain the Nigerian situation.
In a three-part series, I intend to review the role of ASUU in moving the country forward. The intention is to focus on what ASUU does best by providing policy papers on several issues to transform Nigeria. What the public knows is what ASUU grudgingly does: strike declarations. Many will disagree with this statement since the public is unaware of its conferences and policy recommendations. The bad news travels much faster than the good news. To put this significant conference in context, I will review ASUU’s history and contributions, which are always buried below the radar because of the over-emphasis on strikes. Of course, I will not brush aside the criticisms of the union which I spell out in this foundational piece.
He who pays the piper, says the sages, dictates the tune. Though I think they rightly say it, that is as ordinary as it gets. The piper may well suffer a constrained application of his talents were he to forever hearken to the whims of his payer or be forced to submit to odd inconveniences to his detriment. For the latter reason, the contemporary concepts of unionization and collective bargaining exist. The logic is straightforward – the payer should indeed dictate, but only reasonably and humanely for the piper.
This, brethren, is at the heart of the work of ASUU and other labour unions. First established as the National Association of University Teachers in 1965, during the days of the country’s first-generation universities, ASUU started as a much more temperate organization. Its history of radicalism, however, began in the late 1970s when sundry issues of employee welfare and underwhelming national political leadership forced it to recognize a need for an extensive shift in its orientation. Marking its new approach was a name change to the Academic Staff Union of Universities and agenda-setting for developing Nigeria’s education sector during successive governments.
Since the change in its posture, ASUU has been up against determined foes expressed through an underfunded sector and deteriorating working conditions. To make matters worse, it is perpetually up against a government that fails to fulfil its commitments and resorts to disingenuous plans to arm-twist the union. For these reasons, the word ‘ASUU’ is synonymous with nothing but strike action in the consciousness of the average Nigerian. Over time, one might even argue that members of the public have come to believe that the business of the lecturers has been primarily self-centred, more likely to spill into public awareness when issues such as pay, or staff welfare come up. This is evidenced by a pattern of burying hatchets following financial compensation from the government.
In recent years, the union has attempted to reconcile its demands with the desire of parents and students who seek a hitch-free education completion. By couching its core welfare goals within objectives such as increased funding for tertiary institutions, ASUU has targeted the sympathies of other stakeholders. Whether or not it can sustain itself for long is a different question, as the self-interested purposes frequently eclipse its supposed activism. Still, it would be unfair to conform entirely to this position. After all, unions are created for specific ends and would not serve their purposes if they do not pursue them unrelentingly. Yet, we must remember a sector’s social and economic significance, such as education. Nelson Mandela rightly construes education as the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world, as neither planes nor multi-carriage highways are as transformational as an institution that prioritizes the mindset of people. In a country like ours, this change can never be overemphasized. This leads us to a dilemma. If the union has a strict obligation to seek its constituents’ interests first, where lies the line between this and safeguarding the sacredness of our tertiary institutions? Which interest comes first? The union’s or the country’s intellectual future?
To put this in a better context, the issues raised by ASUU since 2009 must revolve around implementing funding commitments to education, including earned academic allowances and budgetary increases for the sector. They further extend to issues around IPPIS, rapid, unchecked establishment of new institutions by state governments, staff victimization and unjust terminations, among others. On the other hand, the union’s actions fundamentally detail the career aspirations of young people in universities, forcing them to spend years above their original study period in universities. Compared to peers overseas, Nigerian students are condemned to seemingly endless waits, causing them to expend much longer durations on pursuing degrees. Interestingly, what is noticeable on these sides of the divide is the intersection of some pain points with the needs of students. It is naturally expected that increased funding to institutions will mitigate challenges such as dilapidated facilities, poor accommodation, and all-round underwhelming teaching standards in universities. That outcome acquires greater importance when the average budgetary spend on education in Nigeria, transfixed stubbornly at less than ten per cent, is compared to other African countries with even lower financial bandwidth.
A standardization problem equally arises with the growth of multiple institutions established by state governments who are more concerned about being seen as acting than genuine action. Both areas of agitation eventually aim to improve the quality of education for the citizenry. Notably, the same factors that vent the union’s agitations have also occasioned an exodus of lecturers from Nigeria. In search of pastures where their efforts are better praised and rewarded, lecturers and students flock to foreign institutions in droves. The effect is inevitably a drain on the intellectual resources available for national use and exportation to climes already enjoying a developmental advantage. Annually, global university rankings showcase the underdog status of Nigeria’s institutions with the sprinkle of local schools that barely cling to spots in the top 1000. There is little else that one needs to diagnose an absence of vision in the country’s leadership.
To the posers I raised earlier, the appropriate answer seems to me to be that we ask a single question, not two when we question the loyalties of the academic staff. The preceding information informs us that their welfare is as much as theirs, as is the quality of knowledge impartation we muster. Still, I must also add that this view is only possible if ASUU refuses the allure of a narrow-minded perspective. What could this possibly mean? It implies that the union cannot sufficiently claim to be one for all, if the easiest way to alleviate it is through salary payments. It might as well confess to pretexts of activism, then. It must be, and I understand how demanding this must be of a single union amid many envisioning its employment conditions as the same to upscale Nigeria’s education.
This leads me to another issue. If ASUU brands itself as determined to catalyze national development through action in the education sector, what visions does it nourish for executing this? More specifically, where does the union stand on student loans and the commercialization of education in general? By this token, might we associate the union with ownership from an ideological standpoint? If so, what is it? The debates here are sure to be myriad, if not never-ending. It is simply not too much to demand that institutions of learning receive proper investment if the political climate were one that nurses a figment of concern for the country’s future. So far, it appears ASUU is vehemently opposed to the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) concept. It argues that it is a diversion strategy to corral money into private universities run by political cronies while denying much-needed funds to the public. Whether the argument is correct is a truth that only time will reveal; however, the legitimacy of ASUU as an appropriate advocate, to some people, has been in doubt. The National Association of Nigerian Students, who operate the latter end of stakeholders in university classrooms, have lashed out at the lecturers for their stance on loans. To them, contesting a system that could relieve struggling students and guarantee access to education is inconsiderate. The rebuttal sounds good, but NANS has been an organization that has been in doubt for years now. It has lost its consciousness as a student representative body and now thrives on its subordination to the political leadership for relevance. For NANS, an organization whose members sling guns at polls and curry favours from high-ranking politicians in return for unabashed praise singing, the best they can be awarded is a consideration worth a thimble of salt.
Bring on the various arguments, for or against ASUU, to Abuja. Idris Abdulkadir Auditorium, National Universities Commission, 25 Aguiyi Ironsi Street, Maitama District, Garki.
