LECTURERS of state-owned universities in the South-East have been on strike since July 22 in protest over the refusal of their employers, state governments, to implement the 2009 agreement the Federal Government reached with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU.

Professor Ukachukwu Awuzie, President of ASUU, has asked ASUU branches nationwide to join a three-day solidarity strike with lecturers in the South-East state universities. The sympathy strike started yesterday.

According to Awuzie: “Governors of the South-East have basically ignored the demands, they have completely ignored the sad and dangerous fact that over 250,000 of their youths have been idle, roaming the streets and merging with the hundreds of thousands other unemployed in the region; they have ignored the fact that it is their duty to ensure that such a crisis never occurs; they have ignored the dangerous crisis completely and with impunity.”

The issues go beyond non-payment of entitlements of ASUU. Awuzie speaks of dismal staffing, extremely poor teaching facilities, irregular power supply, and underfunding of the universities. These may be national occurrences, but the situation in the South-East is by far worse.

Awuzie said, “to continue to believe that these institutions can go on like this and still be regarded as universities is tantamount to self-deceit and we are no longer prepared to go on with it.” He seems to be talking to himself.

What is the position of the political class in the South-East on closure of the universities? Why have legislators, ministers and other political appointees kept quiet about this?

Where is Ohaneze in this matter? Does the silence mean the future of our youth is unimportant or that the chase to support one presidential candidate over the other was more important than the future of our people?

Governors’ defence is that they cannot pay, rather, they will not pay the same emoluments with the federal universities. There is a hint in that position that those who teach in state universities do not qualify for the payments because the Federal Government cannot tell the states what to pay.

Part I  of the Exclusive Legislative List of the 1999 Constitution, Item 34 states,  “Labour, including trade unions, industrial relations; conditions, safety and welfare of labour; industrial disputes; prescribing a national minimum wage for the Federation or any part thereof; and industrial arbitration” under the authority of the Federal Government.

Governors in the South-East prefer to ignore this provision, or argue against it as if they can choose the parts of the Constitution to obey. They swore to obey the Constitution.

Item 34 is one of 68 items on the exclusive legislative list — only the Federal Government can make laws on them. Why would governors accept authority of the Federal Government on the other 67 items but not on labour relations? Were the governors unaware of this provision when they swore to faithfully uphold the Constitution?

The present deadlock is unacceptable. Governors should accept responsibility for universities in their states running. It makes no sense to shut them down, arguing the states cannot pay.

Arguments that other states earn more and therefore can run their universities fail to address the issue. There are states earning less than some states in the South-East and their universities are in session. Have governors in the South-East found out how these states manage their resources?

The South-East is unique in many ways. Part of that distinction, used to be considered the region’s strength, its ability to lean on its neglect to help itself. What has happened to that spirit?

In 1984, then Brigadier Ike Umar Sanda Nwachukwu, as military governor of the old Imo State launched an appeal which raised more than N5 million, a lot of money in those days, and possibly more than N500 million in today’s terms.

The money was ploughed into moving the Imo State University, then in three campuses (Aba, Owerri and Obowu) to its permanent site in Uturu, now Abia State University.

Resources to run the universities in the South-East are possible, if governors are convinced the universities should remain in session. It is self-defeating to consider this a fight against ASUU. It is a fight against the future of the youths and it is a fight South-East governors cannot win. The people know the governors, not ASUU.

Nobody elected ASUU, governors were elected to minimise peoples’ inconveniences.
Governments  in the South-East are sitting smugly as if closure of the universities is a victory for them. Do they realise the students, after paying fees to the universities, have a contract of an expected service from these universities?

What solutions are they proposing beyond asking ASUU to go back to work? Are they promising to pay ASUU at a later date? Do they expect the lecturers would get tired and return to work? Or would they employ new lecturers, who would be glad to earn whatever the governors want to pay?

The uncommon unity among the five governors on this matter could be useful if applied in areas of common challenges like the development of infrastructure in the South-East.

There are projects that can be the beneficiary of the type of resolve governors of the South-East have applied to the closure of their universities.

When actions of governments affect ordinary people, their implications are overlooked. Those egging on South-East governors do not have their children in these schools.

Even if they do, they have alternatives, like getting them places in private universities, where they would use resources they have acquired while serving the people to train their wards.

Children of ordinary people, on whose behalf governments claim to exist, are left to waste, creating the next generation of the uneducated, poor, deprived and marginalised, who would be blamed for holding down society’s progress.

It is unthinkable in these times when linkages in the activities of the smallest communities have global consequences that universities can be shut for months and governments pretend it does not matter.

In their creativity and innovativeness, South-East governors think the solution to the problem is to ignore it.

Governors of the South-East should be ashamed of themselves for compromising the future of our youths and transferring their spat with ASUU to damage the future of these young people.

It would take some determination to re-open these universities, especially when governors feel they are in the same realm with the Almighty, and think dealing with the likes of ASUU deducts from their importance.

All that is left is for god-fathers of the governors (anyone they listen to) to act in the common interest by calling their sons to order. Universities in the South-East cannot be different from those in other parts of Nigeria, no, not this type of difference.