FG’s Foggy Intervention in ASUU’s Unending Strike

IN THE ARENA

The nearly five-month-old strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, which has prostrated Nigeria’s public tertiary education, requires a genuine and decisive intervention by the relevant stakeholders, writes Louis Achi

What is unfolding in the nation’s tertiary academic arena currently is arguably comparable to an Athenian tragedy but certainly lacking the majesty of a Greek drama. It’s hardly debatable that Nigeria’s development quandary at this juncture of her history is firmly linked to how cavalierly her leadership has been treating the education of its children who encapsulate her future.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), a Nigerian union of university academic staff founded in 1978, has fought consistently to ensure that the university system draws the vital oxygen of funding, infrastructural and other critical inputs from its promoters to give real meaning to having varsities in the first place.

Nelson Mandela’s compelling insight perhaps best captures why the nation’s leaders should urgently change their quirky engagement strategy with ASUU. His words: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.”

According to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and South Africa’s revolutionary first black president “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

Could the foregoing proclamation by Africa’s preeminent statesman have influenced President Muhammadu Buhari to make what probably represents his first direct, frontal engagement of ASUU from his Daura country home in Katsina State, last week?

The president had last Monday lampooned the striking ASUU, for being adamant and not calling off the lingering strike and said that “enough is enough.”

He urged ASUU to return to their classrooms in the interest of “our students and the country.”

He spoke when he received some APC governors, lawmakers and other dignitaries who paid him Sallah visit in Daura. He stated that the lingering strike would have generational consequences on families, the educational system and future development of the country.

According to him, the strike had already taken a toll on the psychology of parents, students and other stakeholders, throwing up many moral issues that are already begging for attention. But this exasperated approach neither represented an Olive Branch nor a well-thought-out position that could foreshadow a crisis resolution.

ASUU had called out its members on a one-month warning strike on February 14, 2022, over the non-implementation of the Memorandum of Action (MoA) it signed with the government and the insistence of the government on the adoption of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system (IPPIS) as a payment platform for all federal workers. The warning strike had morphed into a full-blown action that has dragged for five months and counting.

The union proposed the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as an alternative platform for the payment of its members’ salaries following discrepancies highlighted in the use of IPPIS.

The miffed union last week described as “sad,” Buhari’s “enough is enough” comment on its ongoing strike, recalling the number of times the federal government had breached agreements with it. It argued that it should be the one saying “enough is enough.”

ASUU stated it was ready to call off the strike if the government okayed its two main demands: Accept UTAS and the renegotiated 2009 pact.

ASUU President, Dr. Emmanuel Osodeke, recalled that it was sad that almost a month after the union leadership concluded negotiations with the Nimi Briggs-led Committee, the government had yet to get back to it. He said it was the same outcome last year when the union had a pact with the Prof. Munzali Jubril-led Committee on the condition of service for university teachers.

Lamenting that the government failed to honour the agreement reached in May 2021, he revealed: “We have given our conditions for returning to the classrooms. They (government) set up a committee to negotiate with us and when they (committee) came, we asked them: ‘do you have the mandate of the government to negotiate?’ And they said ‘yes’.

“We asked them: ‘does it mean that whatever we agree with will be accepted by the government? They said ‘yes.’ We started negotiations and we finished on the 16th of June 2022. They (the committee) said they were going back to show their principal and get permission to sign. We have been waiting till now.”

Giving more insight into the dilemma, he said that, “It is we who should be saying ‘enough is enough.’ They did that in 2021; it took one year to come back and they are doing it again. We have told the country that any day that they (government) agrees to sign and agree on a new salary payment system (UTAS), we will call off the strike immediately. Let him (Buhari) do the needful and let the children go back to school, not saying ‘enough is enough.’ He should put our universities right; that should be his legacy.”

On his part, outspoken Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Dr. Mathew Kukah condemned the lingering strike by ASUU, stressing also that “enough is enough.” According to Kukah, it is highly unacceptable that students have been at home for over four months and gates of Nigerian universities still remain closed.

He stated that it was quite sad that the strike has lasted this long, adding that it does not speak well of the democracy that the country practises. Kukah insisted that  democracy has always given the people a platform for negotiation, consensus and several other means for solving such issues that exist between the government and the authorities of the various universities.

Kukah who spoke last Wednesday at the signing of a peace accord ahead of the Osun State gubernatorial election, said Nigeria must come to understand that without the universities giving opportunities for academic energy, analysis, and theorising, it will be impossible for the nation’s democracy to grow.

Over the decades, strikes and related threats by ASUU and other sister unions have continued to dog the nation’s tertiary educational system. Curiously, no administration has found a lasting solution to these intermittent crises.

At the heart of the union’s work stoppages is the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), reached between the federal government and the union in 2008 which was never implemented. After serial strike actions which always ended with the federal government giving assurances during the negotiations, ASUU went on one of its most protracted strikes in March 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

Eventually, ASUU called off the strike in December 2021 after the unimplemented MoU was rechristened Memorandum of Action (MoA). Since then, the federal government has only released about N55 billion to partially address the issues of Earned Allowances and the Universities Revitalisation.

Again, the promise to deploy UTAS, rather than IPPIS, to ensure academic freedom, has not been fully activated and even the Earned Allowances, Universities Revitalisation Funding and deployment of UTAS have not been satisfactorily implemented.