AFTER more than three months of shutting the universities down, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, and the Federal Government have decided to call off this round of strike, an annual ritual that befuddles Nigerians about the issues of university education.
The only time Nigerians hear about ASUU is when it is on strike. It is remarkable that this latest truce came with high prices, not exactly surprising for followers of these disruptions that have steadily seen to a fall in the quality of our university graduates.
One of the prices is that ASUU walked away with higher salaries while at the same time the Federal Government outrightly rejected increase in funding of university education to the 26 per cent of the budget ASUU requested, or any figure for that matter. University teachers would get higher pay without improvements in libraries and teaching facilities.
So what was the strike about? ASUU felt it was poorly paid compared with lecturers elsewhere. Government could not counter-argue that it was unlike governments in other places, so it negotiated, walked out on ASUU and finally acquiesced.
The fact that the agreement is only for federal universities means another round of strike could be on. State universities are to negotiate with their governments. ASUU President Professor Patrick Awuzie is from Imo State University.
Prof. Awuzie has warned that signing the agreement was not as important as implementation. ASUU state university affiliates would go through another negotiation, a rite government claims gives them autonomy.
Nigerians have to brace themselves for these routine strikes. They no longer have any meaning beyond the complications they bring into the lives of families that expect too much from government and the academic community.
The country seems to have decided long ago that the quality of the products of its educational system does not matter. Neither the government nor ASUU is interested in education outside the lifeline it provides for contending parties.
Poor parents who cannot send their children to private universities or those who want their children in public universities are the victims. The larger society is not spared a near illiterate work force that further under develops it.
In the interest of Nigerians, employers, governments included, must have a plan for the welfare of their workers, such that the insistent disruptions that have become part of the culture of university administration must be ended.
As each segment of the work force realises that the only way to get government attention is a strike, it would adopt that method. The Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities, NASU is set to take its own shot at a strike if its conditions of service are not improved.
It is not enough to scoff at their seeming unimportance to university education. NASU is also known to have shut down activities in universities or get them to drag to a point that we meet their demands.
The next strikes are not too far away.
Do Nigerian lecturers know what being a university lecturer entails outside the shores of Nigeria? In Nigeria, lecturing is easiest job with its immoral perks. In a country like the US, it is not only one of the hardest jobs to secure, but definitely, the hardest to retain due to the tenure system, whereby over 50% of PhDs hired as Assistant Professors are dropped by the universities, 5-7 years after their initial date of hire, for not meeting up with attracting grant money for research, not publishing enough high quality research papers in reputable peer reviewed research journals, not meeting teaching standards as determined by students, who review them annonymously at the end of every course. Yes, university students in the US, are not hapless victims of extortion, indimidation, rape and other forms of exploitatations by their lecturers. Students participate in determining who survives as a lecturer and those who are thrown out of the universities as unqualified and undeserving of having the lifetime appointment, with the attending hardwork, prestige and the privileges of becoming a tenured professor, in the US university system.
In Nigeria, anyone who has a PhD is guaranteed a teaching position in the tertiary institutions, and after a year or two, he is equally guaranteed a lifetime employment, where rising through the rank is a matter of choice. It is not so in many other countries. One is lucky, if a mere PhD garners them interview for appointment. And for the lucky few that get hired as Assistant Professors or entry level lecturer position, that is just the beginning. And for the folks tenured as associate professors, it is a lifelong intellectual pursuit. not for its sake, but to keep their jobs and reputation. It is unthinkable for a full professor in the US system to go and relax, because he or she is a tenured professor. Not only would he hear from the university, he would be the butt of jokes and ridicle by his colleagues in his discipline.
Being a lecturer involves much more than teaching. Most courses, with the exception of graduate level and upperclassmen courses, do not require a PhDs to teach them. In Nigeria, anyone who has a Masters or PhD, who gains appointment into a tertiary institution carries the air that Nigeria owes him something. It is not the case in these other systems that are being compared to Nigeria. In their characteristic manner, the lecturers have extorted 52% salary increase from a nation that cannot really afford to pay that to a tiny, albeit important section of the economy. What has the govt demanded from the lecturers to do differently to improve the system? Any Nigerian student will tell you that the lecturers are much more the problem, than they are the victims.
Now that the lecturers have been pacified with a hefty salary increase, all stakeholders: government( including the state and national assembly), university councils, university administrations, ASUU and students must participate in instituting changes that will return integrity and glory back to the uuniversity system. At the heart of this is increasing the supply of PhDs and empowering students to start policing and keeping their lecturers honest. If this 52% raise is thrown at the lecturers to keep them quiet, so that they will go back to business as usual, nothing really has been accomplished. In five years, this gain will be wiped by inflation and politician compensation will continue to be irresponibly high and the lecturers will come back for more. We must find a way to break this vicious cycle and establish an enduring tradition university system, where academic integrity and scholarship are supreme, once more.
It is this time that the parents, who are always appealing to ASUU to call off strike for the sake of their children, to do whatever is in their power to make sure governments – Federal or State – do the correct thing.