The Union has made its point. It is time to call off the strike
Tuesday last week marked exactly 100 days that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) began an indefinite strike that has shut down all the public universities in the country.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no headway in the negotiations to resolve the crisis, going by the rhetoric of the zonal coordinator, Benin zone of ASUU, Dr. Ighalo Sunny. While noting that the union appreciates the interest shown by various stakeholders in the crisis, he added, rather ominously:
“but that will not stop us from finding lasting solution to the decay in our education sector. So, even if it takes us another 10 years, we will remain at home until the right thing is done.”
Instructively, the Federal Government believes it has already done enough to make ASUU call off its strike. In the course of his media chat on the eve of the country’s 53rd Independence anniversary two weeks ago, President Goodluck Jonathan indeed alleged that politics had crept into ASUU’s industrial action.
The President specifically noted that he does not control the resources of the states and wondered why lecturers in state universities are also on strike over a matter that had to do with demands on the federal government.
While there may be no statistical measure of the cumulative damage done to the system in the course of the current ASUU strike that is now in its fourth month, it is evident that education, the bedrock of any society, has become a huge joke in our country. Incessant industrial actions have combined with inadequate attention to damage, almost beyond repairs, our institutions of higher learning.
Strike actions are sometimes justified by the fact that government officials, both at state and federal levels, have acquired a reputation for responding to issues only when they have assumed crisis proportions.
The present ASUU strike, for instance, shows no marked shift from tradition. The trade union and the government agreed on certain terms by arbitration, through the Gamaliel Onosode Panel, as far back as 2009. One of the major demands of the university teachers, besides the issue of emoluments, was the need for increased sectoral allocation to education in the annual budget to meet the minimum standard as enunciated by UNESCO. The frustrating state of implementation of the agreements freely entered into, as well as the resort to strike actions, was aptly captured by ASUU President, Dr Nasir Fagge, when he said: “if we fold our arms, the system would die anyway.
So, it is better to do something. It is because we have been going on strike intermittently that we have a system in the country”.
While the lecturers may have a point, it is also a fact that they are fast losing credibility in the eyes of most Nigerians. In the present trade dispute, as we had occasion to point out recently, ASUU is putting premium on personnel entitlements and welfare issues.
Yet the union has rarely been heard in demanding performance from its members as part of the contract with the nation. Even when we hold government accountable for the current state of the educational system, ASUU has not done itself any favour by its constant recourse to the strike option at the slightest excuse.
It is also very clear that most of the university lecturers, especially the very active ASUU members and officials, do not improve themselves intellectually as serious scholars.
It is therefore no surprise that no university in Nigeria is ranked among the world’s first 500. Even within the continent, the dismal performance of our universities is better appreciated by the large number of Nigerians trooping to neighbouring countries within the West African sub-region to earn degrees.
There is an urgent need to resolve the current crisis, so that our public universities can reopen and the students go back to the classrooms.
Every day they are shut out of school exposes them to the danger of ultimately not being useful to themselves and to the larger society. While ASUU remains adamant with reference to the agreement under dispute, the rot it is also nurturing by virtue of incessant strikes should also not be lost on the lecturers.