By Msonter Anzaa
“We wouldn’t tolerate schools that don’t teach, that are chronically under-funded and under-staffed and under-inspired if we thought the children in them were like our children.” Barack Obama
The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has commenced a one-week warning strike to protest the federal government’s failure to implement some parts of an agreement reached with the union in 2009 after a strike that lasted over three months. The federal government is asking for more negotiations. ASUU has said it will not re-negotiate anything, and so the universities are closed once more. What is the origin of ASUU strikes and what would it take the federal government to bring them to a permanent end?
The history of the confrontation between ASUU and the federal government is long. Historians can even trace it beyond the regime of Military President Ibrahim Babangida when the then chairman Attahiru Jega and his colleagues closed universities for a very long period. Recent disagreements however, came to the fore in 2009 when the union demanded the implementation of an agreement it claimed was reached with the federal government in 2007. The federal government denied that there had ever been an agreement. The Professor Ukachukwu Awuzie-led ASUU closed universities indefinitely while negotiations were held. It was the intervention of Edo Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomohle that led to an agreement with the union. In the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, the federal government agreed to increase the lecturers’ pay by 50 percent, provide autonomy to the universities in the appointment of vice-chancellors, raise to 70 the retirement age of professors and provide more funding to the universities (THE NATION October 22, 2009 P.1)
While some aspects of the agreement may have been implemented, it is clear that some including the more fundamental issue of increased funding that would help expand and equip universities to serve the educational needs of all Nigerian children, have not been met. Parts of the agreement actually required the passage of bills that would give them legal backing. The failure of the executive arm of the federal government to initiate these bills for passage by the National Assembly and subsequent implementation is part of why ASUU has gone on a warning strike. Most times when ASUU goes on strike, many individuals think it is just about an increased pay for the lecturers. This is not so. The issue of funding is so central to the entire educational system that it should have been championed by a versatile National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS. The failure of NANS to stand up for a better educational system has left the ASUU with no alternative than to take up the fight. Even if the students are not bothered about over-crowded, suffocating lecture halls and ancient-styled, poorly-equipped laboratories, the lecturers who teach in them are bothered.
It would not take the federal government of Nigeria any super-human effort to return stability to the educational system. It would only take a proper understanding of how important education is to national security and economic development. If the educational system is well-funded, laboratories would be equipped with modern apparatus and funds would be available for research and man-power development. I have argued in my earlier articles that this is central to greatness. Students working under the leadership of their lecturers would carry out researches that would present solutions to the nation’s pressing needs. Today we read of how Geiger and Marsden, two students who worked under Rutherford discovered the nucleus of an atom. The results of these researches can be developed on an industrial scale that can provide jobs and a marketable product for the nation. One of my popular examples is the discovery through genetic engineering of a yam species that can be planted in the morning and harvested in the evening. That kind of discovery would feed the nation more adequately, release more land for developmental projects, produce surplus yams for international markets and thus enhance the income profile of the farmers. Another is the discovery of electricity in a species of trees. This would be the cleanest source of energy on earth, and in addition to saving us the stress of having to import turbines for our dams, it would attract even the Chinese and the Americans. Production of this tree alone may employ up to 70 million Nigerians because international markets would be very willing to trade in it. This would provide job security and soon there will be no idle individual to start a riot over a piece of suya. All these depend on a well-funded educational system.
Typical of its lackadaisical attitude towards education and its hypocrisy in dealing with the future of its young ones, the federal government’s only response to the ASUU threat was to call for more negotiations. ASUU rejected it well. The government must have taken the union for fools. What is the essence of fresh negotiations? Now it is easy to see that the federal government and Boko Haram are one. Boko Haram hates education; the federal government hates it too. Boko Haram is attacking educational institutions; the federal government is frustrating their staff. Boko Haram wants western education banned; the federal government wants it dead. Boko Haram uses chemo-physical weapons; the federal government uses financial starvation. Tell me, if education were good, why would the federal government of Nigeria refuse to commit 26 percent of its annual budget to it as recommended by UNESCO? It commits 7 percent. “Botswana spends 19.0 percent; Swaziland, 24.6; Lesotho, 17.0; South Africa, 25.8; Cote d’Ivoire, 30.0; Burkina Faso, 16.8; Ghana. 30.0; Kenya, 23.0; Uganda, 27.0; Tunisia, 17.0; and Morocco, 17.7 percent” (Steve Okecha; Education. Newswatch October 6, 2008 P.21).
Is it surprising then that we have “educated” individuals in and out of government whose only evidence of education is the certificate? Some of them are first-class graduate, but there is nothing first-class about the way they dress, talk or think. I believe some officials of government are also victims of the educational system they have refused to develop. Otherwise why is it so difficult for the federal government to realize that if education fails, everything including security, the economy and even governance would fail? If it took a PhD or any other certificate qualification, the federal government would know, for it is made up of an impressive assembly of individuals who parade an army of both western and home made academic and traditional titles. No, it takes something deeper than the ability to “cut” the “national cake”. It takes commitment and patriotism. It takes common sense and that is what the federal government of Nigeria does not have.
Finally, when it refused to take responsibility for the decay in education nationwide; when it refused to release the oil commonwealth for the future of its young ones, and when it behaved like education were haram, that is when the federal government of Nigeria became Boko Haram.
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