The Academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU has said the response of the federal government towards the demands of the union and development of public universities is disappointing.
The union maintained that the poor response is deepening the crisis of youth underdevelopment by sabotaging their 2009 agreement in demanding a modest condition of service and salary upgrade
Adressing the journalists in Ibadan, the University of Ibadan branch Chairperson Ayoola Akinwole, said “Our students are further put in precarious conditions each time the government reneges on its promise to upgrade the condition of service of workers. Such unpatriotic, deceitful moves by this regime would always trigger a strike. And aside the fact that undue delay is forced on University calendars, leading to an unending payment of exorbitant private hostel bills, some students end up not returning to conclude their work. This bleeds our hearts as scholars.
“The most recent confirmation of government’s anti-people stance is shown in the current step by the Buhari regime to play deaf to the Implementation of an agreement both government and ASUU had carefully nursed for Implementation for over ten years. And since government is playing pranks with ASUU, it may as well be necessary and urgent for Nigerians to rise in their teeming millions in order to rescue the future of education and development from rulers who have turned against their people. Nigerians must uncompromisingly and democratically rise to rescue public education NOW.
Read the full text of press conference below.
ACADEMIC STAFF UNION OF UNIVERSITIES
UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN BRANCH
PRESS CONFERENCE
A CALL TO RESCUE OUR PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES FROM TOTAL COLLAPSE
Text of Press Conference Held by ASUU – UI Branch on Wednesday 9th March 2022 Addressed by the Chairperson, Comrade Ayoola Akinwole At The Large Lecture Theatre ,Faculty Of Arts, University of Ibadan
I Protocols
II Introduction
Gentlemen of the Press, distinguished ladies and gentlemen.
On behalf of the leadership and congress members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Ibadan branch, I welcome you to another interactive session on the state of our dialogue with the Federal Government of Nigeria on the ongoing struggle by our Union to salvage the Public University system in Nigeria. The public domain has been inundated with so much misinformation on the rationale for the current strike and the interaction between ASUU and the Federal Government of Nigeria; ASUU as a union of scholars is committed to the cause of truth, it thus has become really important to provide some clarifications.
III Our Current Strike and Demands
The current four-week roll-over total and comprehensive strike action as declared by the National Executive Council (NEC) of our Union on Monday 14th February 2022 is to compel the Federal government of Nigeria to resolve the lingering following issues;
1. Sign and commence immediate implementation of the already concluded Renegotiated 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement.
2. Implement all outstanding provisions of the MoA signed with our Union on the 23rd day of December, 2020.
3.Deployment of the University Transparency and accountability Solution (UTAS), The locally developed pay platform by ASUU which is a cost-effective alternative with distinct capacity to check corruption and preserve the hard-earned autonomy of Nigerian Universities.
4. Mainstreaming of the Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) into the annual federal budget as agreed to by the FGN in the various memoranda signed with ASUU.
5. Urgent consideration and passage of the Bill to amend the National Universities Commission (NUC) Act with a view to empowering the NUC to address the problems of proliferation and under-funding of State Universities.
6. Release of the White Papers on the Visitation Panels sent to Federal Universities
7. Immediate payment of Earned Academic Allowances to our union members in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in line with the established procedure and stipulated guidelines.
8. Victimisation of Academics in some state universities, viz; Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), Abia State University (ABSU), Kogi State University (KSU), Ebonyi State University (EBSU), Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma (AAUE) and few others.
Over three weeks into the current strike, the response of the FGN has been, to say least disappointing. We wish to further call the attention of Nigerians to the manner in which the government is further, and recklessly deepening the crisis of youth underdevelopment by sabotaging our 2009 agreement in demanding a modest condition of service and salary upgrade.
Our students are further put in precarious conditions each time the government reneges on its promise to upgrade the condition of service of workers. Such unpatriotic, deceitful moves by this regime would always trigger a strike. And aside the fact that undue delay is forced on University calendars, leading to an unending payment of exorbitant private hostel bills, some students end up not returning to conclude their work. This bleeds our hearts as scholars.
The most recent confirmation of government’s anti-people stance is shown in the current step by the Buhari regime to play deaf to the Implementation of an agreement both government and ASUU had carefully nursed for Implementation for over ten years. And since government is playing pranks with ASUU, it may as well be necessary and urgent for Nigerians to rise in their teeming millions in order to rescue the future of education and development from rulers who have turned against their people. Nigerians must uncompromisingly and democratically rise to rescue public education NOW.
IV Nigerian Youths and the Quest for Knowledge
In the last few weeks, the world stood bewildered as Nigerian students crawled under bunkers, the hale of riffles and couster bombs in faraway Ukraine where they are seeking higher education and professional fulfillment.
We do know that the search for knowledge is, inevitably, one that takes the seeker far and wide, yet we also know that nations that seek to develop ensure that public education is never toyed with in the manner that our government is doing. ASUU is particularly pained that the Nigerian political elite is deliberately destroying our public educational system. Not just this, the current regime is endangering the safety of our students and youth, as those who are not sacrificed by foreign warring nations are on the home front struggling against kidnappers, banditry and a medium scale guerrilla warfare that feeds on out-of-school children and idle youth perpetually kept jobless and out of school as a result of government’s conscious effort to destroy the Nigerian public university. What is the root of all this ?
V Neoliberalist Agenda of the FGN on our Public Universities
Twenty three years after Nigeria’s return to civil rule in 1999, the political party system, elected political office holders, government functionaries and the ruling elites has shown lack of ideological clarity for running a growing nation state and avoiding appalling dysfunctionality, Nigerians currently live and lament unendingly about the same issues over and over again with negative progress on critical issues of economy, governance, healthcare, education, high unemployment, poor infrastructures, obdurate anti-corruption fight and insecurity.
Since 1985 when the Nigerian government wholesomely adopted the neoliberal policies of the Western metropolitan powers directed by World Bank and IMF, we have become even more deeply enmeshed in underdevelopment and constant misery. National resources have remained in the hands of very few business elite and their political allies. State support and subsidies have been given out generously to these business oligarchs. Social programmes are poorly funded, employment opportunities remain anaemic, Neoliberalism in its simplest form is private sector led economy, less regulation, less government intervention, free market and less public ownership. It is the exaltation of unbridled capitalism, which promotes the survival of the fittest. In theory, neo-liberalism exalts the supremacy of market, because market will always self-correct; which is arrant nonsense by the way. The god of market is the god of profit, monopolistic profit in the hands of very few people: business and corporate interest. Neo-liberalism is about individual interest over community interest.
The truth that need be told is that the Federal Government of Nigeria adopts and is implementing neoliberal educational policies that dictate privatization and deregulation of education as antidote to revamp ailing educational standard in Nigeria, but purposively reduces investment in education. This marginalizes children and adults living in poverty and the attendant decrease of equal opportunity to public education. This concept means government non-involvement in the establishment, funding and management of schools. ASUU’s position is as affirmed by Nigerian Constitutional provisions, education to the Nigerian society is and should be treated as a public good, with a strong sense of national development anchored on the principle of social policy and universalism of knowledge through the provision of affordable, accessible and equality education to the greatest number of the people. With neoliberalism, the government is fast inching towards transferring the total unit cost of training the student in our public universities to the student just as is currently being done in private universities. The result is that such high cost on the student will engender less demand, national sense of abandonment, insecurity and restiveness. Neoliberalism and Public Education is a mismatch.
VI Laissez Faire attitude of the FGN towards the Ongoing Strike
The demands of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) are not isolated and government should not treat them as such. The demands have always been in continuing furtherance of the system in line with best practices of University education all over the world. Like individuals are expected to prioritize their needs, government should give public education the attention it requires especially in a growing knowledge economy. If the government can do this, many other sectors of the economy will progressively receive the boost they require. Education holds the key that unlocks the potentials of other sectors.
This ongoing strike has enjoyed tremendous support from members of the union who after enduring much have become tired of failed promises of the government. They are asking the question: after memoranda of understanding and action, what other memorandum do they have left? The utterances of government officials have utterly betrayed the trust that people have on those they elected to serve them. Silence from their side would have been golden rather than run mouth diarrhea that there is no money. Government has shown that the interest of the people is not as important as theirs.
If Nigeria Labour Congress has been asked to call ASUU to order, who else apart from the Nigerian people do the Union ask to call the government officials to order? They have made a mess of the long standing tradition of committee system. They have turned committee formation to finding jobs for political jobbers who will submit their reports that will not be implemented by the government that appointed them. It has become so bad that the country is put on auto run without respect for those they even employ to work for them.
It is never too late for the government to make it an urgent point of duty to solve the problem of University education and not think that it will just pass away. It will be getting worse if nothing is done. Problems do not get solved by propaganda, falsehood and deceit. Government should face the reality of the decay and declare a state of emergency on poor condition of public University in Nigeria and give it what is due to it. Government should stop this isolationism and embrace holistic solution to public University education. Let us stop portraying students’ interest as different from those of their teachers and parents. All the interest converge at improving the quality of life and educational infrastructure
The piece meal solution of part payment of earned academic allowance, grossly inadequate disbursement of revitalization funds, erosion of University autonomy and proliferation of universities should come to an end. You cannot kill the goose that lay the golden egg. Nigerian academics deserve a commensurate living wage consequent on the economic context of Nigeria today in order to maintain the dignity of their work.
VII Conclusion
It is true that Nigeria has never been such a great economic success story but the current decline and the anomie in our public Universities was not on the scale that we see today. It is obvious by veritable evidence that the current political leaders and Administration in Nigeria are paying lip service to public education, nay, the welfare of the common people and workers.
Must we as Nigerians fold our arms and keep mute while a few elected leaders, fueled by mundane inordinate ambitions squander our common wealth on frivolities?
If we do nothing and continue on this trajectory, there obviously would be no end to the perpetual misery in our public Universities.
For us in ASUU, Aluta Continua!
I thank you all.
9th March, 2022
Ayoola Akinwole
Chairperson
