By Amaechi NNABUIFE

BUT for a formal declaration, the South-East zone of the Academic Staff Union of Universities [ASUU], is locked in a battle with the Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo state governments which own the five state universities where ASUU members have refused to teach for the past four months.

The ASUU members are demanding salary parity with their colleagues in federal universities as well as increased funding of the universities whereas the five state governments say they are committed only to negotiated review of the issues independent of what obtains at federal universities. With the two sides adamant on their positions, the question inevitably is, what gives?

The ASUU is well known for activism; dogged activism, if you like. Since the mid- 1980s, the university lecturers’ association has been increasingly outspoken about boosting the fortunes of Nigerian universities. But over the years, the ASUU has come to be associated more with agitation for increased pay for her members than with restoring the pristine values of the university system.

ASUU had fought several wage battles and lost only few. No doubt, a heady feeling of its past victories bears on the union’s optimism about its present conflict with the governments of the South-East states. Here, ASUU needs to pause and re-examine the context and content of the on-going industrial action in the affected state universities.

Public mood was critical to ASUU’s successful prosecution of strikes in the past. The circumstances under which the union made these gains in the past contrasts with the prevailing order today, and this radically different scenario, I dare say, has already begun to vitiate the current industrial action. Recent struggle to improve conditions in Nigerian universities commenced during the dark days of military rule when the country was reduced to elite soldiers’ playground.

ASUU’s  profile rose, not necessarily in public endorsement of its demands but for the courage of confronting arbitrary rule. Reservations existed about creating an exclusive salary scale for any class of public sector workers however important their services, but opposition against dictatorship was of paramount consideration. Whatever could be counted as contribution towards diminishing military rule endeared itself to the masses. It was in this context that public opinion mobilised behind ASUU’s labour activism.

It was smoother sailing for ASUU in the military dispensation because of the operative command and control structure. Military rule translated to unitary form of government. State universities were only state universities in name. Whatever policy decisions a junta took on universities was received by state governors as military orders to be obeyed without question. Thus, in the absence of a distinction between state and federal universities, uniformity of service conditions automatically obtained at the time.

In the present democratic era that presupposes accountability, system resentment is reduced such that agitations by social groups require self-merit to win public support. It happens to be the case that there are those who feel that ASUU has gone on strike too often and for too long. Incessant disruptions in academic  programme of universities as a result of industrial action has done incalculable  harm to Nigerian education. Undergraduates can hardly predict their year of graduation even as certificates of Nigerian universities are derided abroad.

Now, ASUU cannot wish away the constitutional independence of states and the reality of state universities as legal entities created by state laws. It is, therefore, elementary that an agreement between the Federal Government and ASUU has nothing to do with universities owned by state governments. ASUU’s reluctance in accepting this fact is indicative of a presumptuousness difficult to associate with a circle of intellectuals. Is ASUU also saying that this agreement is equally binding on private universities?

Are lecturers in private universities not eligible for membership of ASUU? What law[s] confer on ASUU the power to assume the right of an employer to negotiate contract terms with his employee? So long as ASUU’s offer of talks with the state governments is tied to the implementation of the agreement with the Federal Government, ASUU is not open to negotiations. The state governments are legally and morally right to hold that they do not know about the said agreement.

Greater objection is even more likely on the content of ASUU’s demands. Yes, it sounds lofty to say that 20 percent of government’s annual budget should be devoted to funding universities, but what is the overall picture? What provision has ASUU made for primary and secondary education to determine that 20 or 30 percent budgetary allocation should go to university education? And what percentage goes to other tertiary but non-university education? Unless ASUU can give us a balanced and fair budgetary distribution to all the education sub-sectors and other sectors of the economy, its demand on funding of universities cannot be taken seriously.

And precisely on the pay packet, many believe university lecturers were handsomely remunerated even before the latest increase consequent on the 2009 agreement. The issue is not what an academic is paid in Senegal or Switzerland but the Nigerian standard. Not even secondary school teachers who also do research [before writing lesson notes], source teaching aids and regularly mark assignments, receive one-fifth of what the lecturers are paid. It does appear that ASUU is competing with National Assembly members on who claims the most stupendous salary. Nigerians are incensed at the jumbo pay our legislators have awarded themselves and there is no reason why they should be clapping for the ASUU activists for demanding similar treatment.

Such profligate lifestyle is not sustainable in the long run. Fitch  Ratings, the global financial monitoring agency, recently downgraded Nigeria’s credit standing  from stable to negative, citing unbridled expenditures at all three tiers of government as a principal factor. This is worrying. Ordinarily, many states are considered unviable. With so much of national revenue going to the Federal Government, the states are battling to survive. Granting state universities ASUU’s first-class pay packet and by implication, significantly increasing salary of other workers, all of who do not make up five percent of the population, would be fraught with dire consequences.

Mr. Nnabuife, a retired civil servant,  writes from Adazi-Ani, Anambra State.