By Adekunle Adekoya

WHEN the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU called off its eight month-long strike mid-last month, Nigerians, especially those that have children in federal-owned universities heaved a sigh of relief. In many homes, activities went into overdrive as parents mustered resources to get their children back to school. 

Many university managements could not immediately reopen as heavy cleaning had to be done to make classrooms, hostels and laboratories which were covered with cobwebs and thick layers of dust reusable for teaching and learning.

Now, normalcy seems to have been restored, but only just, as there is palpable apprehension that the lecturers may go back to the trenches. At issue is pay.

There are several sides to the issue. One of them is that ASUU wants its members paid for all of the eight months for which work was not done. 

Another is the general understanding that under labour laws, striking workers will not be paid for the period during which work was not done, which is the position favoured by the Labour Minister. 

Yet another side to it is the issue of pro-rata payment, by which the lecturers were paid for the month of October based on the number of days they were at work. One lecturer let it be known that he was paid the sum of forty thousand naira for the month of October. Developments around the pro-rata payment is fueling fresh agitation, the culmination of which we don’t know yet. The lecturers are rejecting the pro-rata payment on the grounds that they are not casual workers. I join them in the rejection for one reason: if it stands, casualisation of intellectual work would have been institutionalised, and will lay the foundation for the complete destruction of our federal university system. We must not allow that.

Readers of this column will recall that I had urged the Federal Government to make public the details of whatever it agreed with ASUU, so that both sides can be held to account with a view to preventing strikes in our universities. But government has not heeded the call. Even the agreement brokered by Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, which led to ASUU calling of the strike was not made public in detail. It will also be recalled that in a statement announcing the strike’s end, ASUU noted that it is not happy with the agreement but was calling off the strike in deference to interventions by notable Nigerians like Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila.  

Normally when strikes like this end and teachers go back to work, there is frenzied activity to cover lost ground and normalise the academic calendar as fast as possible.

 This seems not the situation as feelers from the campuses indicate a strange type of work-to-rule, whereby students are being availed of just the barest minimum quotient of attention to justify presence at work and attendance in school.

Is this good for us? Is this how we will continue to nurture our future? Will our university system endure and remain competitive like this? Can the products of a university system worsted by avoidable crises like ours ever compete with their peers from other countries? Just what kind of country are we hoping to build, when the training base of the human resource infrastructure is so badly buffeted?

Again, ASUU called a meeting over the issue but opted to keep mum; parents and guardians are on tenterhooks. Meanwhile, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila has waded in again, urging ASUU to hold on till President Muhammadu Buhari returns from his two-week medical sojourn in the United Kingdom. For the umpteenth time, I feel sorry, with deep sorrow at the prevailing situation in our country. 

Our schools are decrepit, but our leaders educate their children in foreign schools. While our healthcare system is in shambles, it is standard practice for our leaders to seek medicare abroad. What then becomes of the rest of us who don’t even have passports, and have never been to airports, talk less of seeking alternatives abroad? Just what hope is left for the average Nigerian? 

In all of this, the imprint of our redoubtable Education Minister, Adamu Adamu seem invisible. Why? How?

Back to the issue of strikes. In saner climes, unions pay striking workers for the duration of a strike, and such strikes hardly extend for as long as the ones we see here. Reason: Leaders, responsible? leaders, usually take proactive action to avoid any disruption in service delivery in the sectors they oversee.

As I see it, the federal university system is being destroyed by an insouciant leadership that Nigeria and Nigerians have had the misfortune to emplace. Slowly, but steadily, private universities and some state-owned ones are filling the gap at a cost that most parents cannot afford. Is this fair? In good conscience, can present holders of public office vouch that they have done their best for us? 

They can. In fact, they are already doing so as they campaign to get elected or re-elected. It is up to us to paraphrase a popular pop artiste and tell them that they tried their best, if they tried at all, but their best is no good at all. Not by any measure!