By VICTOR ECOMA

National interest should be driven by the motive to build a stable and progressive country before any other interest can be served. Eight months of Universities shut-down is not in the best interest of the country and should have been avoided by every available means.

It is far easier to stop salaries of University lecturers thereby inflicting pains, deaths, divorces and instability in the family which is the bedrock of society than it is to engage lecturers more meaningfully with facts and data preemptive to strike, or the application of deep thinking in evaluating, analyzing and understanding lecturers working conditions in relation to the prevailing local and global socio-economic circumstances which have laid the foundation for their legitimate demands.

The concept of “teaching a lesson” demonstrates an absence of “deep thinking” which is highly intellectual and cannot be taken for granted in any meaningful negotiation. Deep thinking is the process of thinking through an issue with research oriented results rather than an ambush by stoppage of salaries.

Stoppage of salaries presupposes brute force and intimidation with the aim to legally gag University lecturers into industrial slavery which ultimately is not in the best interest of Nigeria and for Nigerians. Strike is symptomatic of the diseased socio-economic conditions prevalent in any country at a given time and unless the diseased conditions are addressed squarely there will always be strikes.

The prevailing socio-economic conditions affect lecturers income, the ability to carry on with their work of teaching, research and community service. It affects how well and how long they can live, their ability to afford medical care, housing, manage stress, attend to dependants and so on.

What is of critical national importance is to address the prevailing socio-economic conditions thereby keeping strikes at the barest minimum. Mr. President, Muhammadu Buhari has done his best much more than he met it but more needs to be done.

University lecturers constitute the highest level of intellectual community in any nation, enmeshed with academic freedom which provides for a healthy democratic and intellectual culture free from inhibitions. Anything that affects the University community affects the nation.

Universities had their origins in the Medieval era with library holdings which became research institutes and later transformed into training academies where the idea of autonomy and self-governance first developed. During the 18th century Enlightenment, intellectual enquiries from Universities emphasized democracy and freedom with less control of the State.

The Industrial Revolution modernized university education with the charge to drive technological and scientific developments for the needs of society. As such Universities should be encouraged to ventilate their prime mandate by adequate provision for lecturers welfare and their working conditions.

The Federal Government has to appreciate the point that winning lecturers cooperation is not an act of weakness but strength because without it productivity will not be harnessed. Sociologically speaking, laws and tough talk cannot achieve the desired productivity, growth and development expected from Universities. It is the Federal Government’s disposition towards lecturers and the work they do that will ultimately promote the realization of government aims and set objectives.

Therefore, what is required between Federal Government and the Universities is cooperation and partnership not misunderstanding. What the society expects from the Federal Government and the Universities is efficiency and productivity in performance of duties, no less. Lee Kuan Yew states “the key to peace and harmony in society is a sense of fair play, that everyone has a share in the fruits of our progress”. 

A short ethnography of the various Universities in the country today will show “distress” among lecturers, students, the academic programmes and those whose livelihood revolves around the Universities. I am not sure this is intended by the Federal Government for withholding lecturers’ eight months salaries.

It is also not clear if the research units of the various Federal Ministries of Finance, Education, Health, the Police and others have an assessment of the magnitude impacts of eight months strike and the stoppage of salaries in terms of financial transactions and job losses, negatives in education, reported health challenges and rise in crime rates within the period.

If there are no available data on this, it therefore suggests that the nation takes strikes for granted and as such government functionaries may never understand the need to avert strikes through prompt and purposeful engagements rather than wait to apply the No work, No pay rule.

A law without safe guards and with devastating impact on Nigerians and the economy. One may then ask, will it be morally, legally most appropriate to apply the law over an industrial dispute that has lingered since 2009? Secondly, why is the law silent on the time frame within which it can be applied.

It is concluded that most people are not given to intellectual rigorization as a process of thinking through issues as such it may be difficult for functionaries not so disposed to understand reasons not to apply the law than to do so. The application of the No work, No pay law is a disservice to the achievements of the current administration particularly in a year preceding elections.

The orchestrated motives for such application remain implicit. The Federal Government from the foregoing is anthropologically adviced to pay the University lecturers their withheld salaries in the best interest of the nation, the economy, the university system, Nigerians whose livelihood revolves around the Universities and in safe guard of Nigeria’s international image in line with global best practices.

Prof. Victor E. Ecoma, Fellow Royal Anthropological Institute, London. Head, Dept. of Fine & Applied Arts, University of Calabar.