By Douglas Anele
For instance, ASUU can encourage its branches to closely monitor income and expenditure in each university. At regular intervals, each branch shall request from the relevant authorities detailed account of government subventions and grants and internally-generated revenue (IGR).

This can be done not in the spirit of confrontation but in the spirit of cooperation and mutual respect to identify financial leakages and plug them.

Each local branch of ASUU should not be intimidated in carrying out this task, as long as it approaches it with honesty and sincerity the issue of making university authorities accountable and transparent in their financial transactions. In that regard, every local branch should insist that scarce financial resources must be managed prudently to minimise waste.

Reciprocally, vice-chancellors and academics in other elevated administrative positions must look upon ASUU and cooperate with the union as a partner-in-progress, since no university can achieve academic excellence without solid consistent cooperation of lecturers. This task may not be easy, judging by the intimidating academic titles of those who occupy top administrative positions in the system.

But then, if members of ASUU executive in a university are respected academics in their own right, they can mobilise colleagues to ensure wise utilisation of available scarce resources in the system. Another area where ASUU can creatively apply its power as a change agent is provision of suitable alternative blueprint for proper governance of the country. Clearly the nature and ideological orientation of government at any point in time profoundly affect the education sector generally, and the universities in particular.

Consequently, since the quality of governance deteriorated sharply from the mid-1980s, the negative impact on university education has been tremendous. Regrettably, past military administrations and civilian governments that have emerged since 1999 failed woefully by not providing adequate funding, facilities and conducive environment for the optimum growth of our universities. Again and again, Nigerian leaders have manifested undesirable qualities like greed, visionlessness, corruption and indiscipline.

Periodically the national chairman of ASUU, on behalf of the union, publishes in newspapers responses to government’s policies and makes critical pronouncements on the state of the nation. This is commendable, for it demonstrates that ASUU is alive to its responsibilities to the wider society.

However, the union can improve its strategy in this regard. With respect to key government policies and programmes as enunciated in federal government’s budgets, for instance, ASUU can, on the strength of the Freedom of Information Act, demand for the text of the budget, set up a think-tank comprising lecturers in economics, accounting, business administration, financial management, law, and other relevant disciplines to dissect the document.

If, based on the committee’s findings the budget is judged to be gravely flawed, the group can make useful suggestions through ASUU to government on how to fine tune it in order to achieve concrete results.

Now, despite the fact that Nigeria has been unlucky with pachydermatous governments that are impervious to sound advice, which would make some colleagues to dismiss my suggestion with a wave of the hand as unrealistic, I still believe that ASUU can serve as a gadfly in challenging unreasonable policies and programmes of the federal government.

The union can even go beyond that by articulating alternative, and hopefully better, policies and implementation strategies for government. I know that within ASUU there are more than enough creative minds that can think out of the box, so to speak, on any issue.

All they need are motivation, encouragement and the right platform to put on their thinking-caps to articulate Nigeria’s developmental objectives given the realities on ground and recommend pragmatic mechanisms for actualising them.

Thirdly, ASUU needs to put processes in place to help enhance the quality of lecturers in the system, especially the tiros or neophytes. Anyone who denies that, on the whole, the quality of those employed as academic staff in our universities since the early 1990s is not as high as what obtained during the golden years of university education from the 1960s to mid-1980s must be a self-deceiver. Because there is a general drop in the quality of education right from the primary school level to the tertiary level, there is no way the quality of teaching staff at all levels will not be adversely affected also.

Therefore, ASUU should encourage its local branches to organise seminars, workshops – call it whatever you like, nomenclature does not really matter – so that experienced senior academics, including retirees who are still mentally and physically fit, can teach less experienced lecturers the fundamentals of effective teaching and research in the university.

The tacit assumption that once somebody has a doctorate s/he is a skilled researcher qualified to impart knowledge at the tertiary level is a misconception. That may be the reason why the tradition of mentoring in the “ivory towers” has almost died out.

Like every profession, there ought to be a formal and informal system for apprenticeship which would offer new lecturers the opportunity to learn the nitty-gritty, including the ethic of best practices, in the academia from experienced cerebral colleagues.

The graduate assistantship scheme, I believe, was originally intended to provide a platform for mentoring. But, alas, the scheme is no longer taken seriously by many universities, and some of the graduate assistants themselves, apart from being poor learners, most times collect their doctorate degrees and seek greener pastures outside the university system.

A critic, responding to the misconducts I identified elsewhere against some lecturers, argued that my indictment has nothing to do with ASUU, since the union is not involved in the employment of lecturers and definitely does not support unethical behaviour among its members.

Well, in the first place no one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever accused ASUU of supporting bad conduct by university teachers. Secondly, although the union is not directly involved in the employment of lecturers,  senior academics who are members of ASUU take part in the process as HODs, deans, provosts, vice-chancellors and members of university councils.

Thus, it is wrong to suggest that, since ASUU does not employ of lecturers it should not be concerned about unethical behaviour by its members and, as a result, needs not make effort to reduce such misbehaviour to the barest minimum.

ASUU, as a matter of fact, has a code of conduct for lecturers, which implies an awareness that its members sometimes err.  Proper mentoring is very relevant in this regard. As I indicated earlier, there is little creativity in indefinite strikes.

A paradigm-shift along the lines suggested in this essay, coupled with fresh insights from colleagues, has the potential to transform ASUU from a “strike machine” to a union that is more sensitive to the yearnings and aspirations of students, lecturers, and the general public.

Given the insensitive nature of governance in Nigeria, indefinite strike is expedient sometimes; but it must be used sparingly to avoid unintended collateral damage to the system we are trying to rescue from perdition. The time to start rethinking and refocusing ASUU is NOW!

Concluded