ASUU’s strike: Imperative of change begins with me

By

Oludayo Tade

-

August 21, 2017

For the next few weeks or months, the already suffering Public Tertiary Education in Nigeria will be grounded to a halt courtesy of the insensitivity of our leadership to the future of Nigeria which lies in proper investment in education. The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, had at an emergency National Executive Council, NEC, meeting of 12th August, 2017, discussed among others the abysmal level of implementation of the 2009 ASUU/FGN agreement, 2013 MoU and the shortfall in salaries leading to fractional payment of staff salaries. After exhaustive deliberations, the NEC of ASUU declared a Total Comprehensive and Indefinite strike action beginning from Sunday 13 August, 2017.
This means that while the strike lasts, there shall be no teaching, no examination, no supervision, no attendance of statutory meetings of any kind and other matters. This withdrawal of service will bring suffering to the lives of the lecturers and their families (promotion delays, truncated examinations), the students (elongated stay and frustration) and their parents (more spending, more troubles and delayed rest), those whose livelihoods directly depends on a functional University (printers, typists, photocopiers, barbers, campus cab drivers) and the entire nation (national and international embarrassment, loss of mann hour, and other costs, etc). If these consequences are known, why do we keep allowing strikes to happen? Why will a government breach trust most of the time? Why do we have to ‘struggle’ and sweat to get legitimate things in Nigeria?
Aside from the one-week warning strike in 2016 to make government do the needful, the major strike which lasted about six months started on July 1, 2013 and did not get suspended until December of that same year. I should not talk about the lives of students lost to accident and that of ASUU former President, Festus Iyayi who died in a fatal accident while going to attend ASUU meeting where a decision to end the strike was to be taken. The strike was to force government to fully implement the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement.
This agreement has provision for the payment of Earned Academic Allowances, EAA, for postgraduate supervision with Lecturer I (N15,000), Senior Lecture (N20,000) and Professor (N25,000) per student respectively. Unfortunately since these years, students are being supervised on humanitarian grounds without pay. Till date, majority of lecturers are owed up to seven years by the Federal government to the tune of about N128billion. While the agreement made provisions for the payment of N80, 000 for examining a Master thesis and N105,000 for PhD (External) and for Internal examiners (Master thesis/N45,000 and N65,000) respectively. But here in Southwest top universities, for instance pay N10,000 and N45,000 and yet owe for upward of five academic sessions. In the same Africa, a professor at University of Ibadan assessed a PhD thesis from South Africa and was paid close to $1,000!
Another major grouse is the underfunding of the tertiary education as evident is downward review of education budget. President Buhari has not done well in this regard. In a Vanguard newspapers report of May 28, 2015 entitled ‘What Buhari Promised Nigerians’, the paper quoted him as promising to “Fully review provisions of the Universal Basic Education Act with emphasis on gender equity in primary, secondary school enrolment whilst improving the quality and substance of our schools, through outcome based education, that address the individual, family, and societal roles in education; and the associative skills and competencies that go with these responsibilities; Targeting up to 20% of our annual budget for this critical sector whilst making substantial investments in training quality teachers at all levels of the educational system”. This however has not been the case.