THE NIGERIA’s UNIVERSITY QUESTION, BY SYLVESTER ODION-AKHAINE
Posted by: webmaster Posted date: October 03, 2013 In: Articles & Opinions,
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In the last three months, we have watched with bewilderment the mind-boggling
kid-gloves approach adopted by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) over its
agreement with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The height of it is the last September national media briefing of President Goodluck
Jonathan. The president who was asked about his position on the ASUU strike
said inter alia, “In the past, they did not go this far when strikes were called off but
now politics has gone into everything.” This response is an uncomplicated
indication of the low level of leadership in the country. The president seeks to
create the impression that ASUU strike was politically motivated. This is far from
the truth and we wish to highlight some salient points at issue in the three-month
old standoff for the benefit of many Nigerians who are yet to grapple with the
basics.
The university is the highest place of learning in most societies. It is a place for
research, knowledge production and reproduction as well as its use for the benefit
of society. The commitment of academics is the pursuit of truth wherever it leads
and this is central to the autonomy of the university. It is not a place to be indicted
for ‘teaching what one is paid not to teach.’ It is a place of dissent and controversy
and that is the dialectics of arriving at the truth. Countries which believe in the
development and transformation of their society invest heavily in education. The
industrialized countries of the world invested in research and capacity building and
therefore were able to attain the height of development which they occupy today.
It is to be noted that developing countries that have caught up with the first world
have also invested heavily in education and training. Japan, South Korea, China,
Malaysia, Taiwan Singapore, Indonesia to name a few have all invested heavily in
education making the respected scholar, Amartya Sen, to christen education in
Asia, and especially in China, as the “Eastern Strategy”. South Korea alone
commits over 60 percent of its public spending to achieve universal primary
education. China invested $1.26 trillion representing 4 percent of its GDP on
education in the last five years. Its institutions have access to all published
journals worldwide. Indonesia invested 29.5 percent of its public spending in 2011
alone.
UNESCO recommends 26 percent of a country’s annual budget to education. In
Africa, Ghana tops the list of country with a huge 31percent, Cote d’Ivoire, 30;
Uganda 27; Morocco 26. 1; Swaziland, 24.6; South Africa 25.8; Kenya, 23;
Botswana, 19; Burkina Faso, 16.8 and Nigeria hugs the bottom at 8.4.
Tell us how a Nigerian scholar can compete effectively with his/her colleagues
elsewhere availed with so much huge learning resources. Celestin Monga once
identified four deficits in Africa. These include deficit of self-esteem; deficit of
knowledge and learning; deficit of leadership and deficit of communication. In the
twenty-first century, the worst deficit is that of knowledge and learning. In Nigeria
and elsewhere in the continent it is due largely to naive consciousness of the
leaders who believe that development can come about by miracle and rhetoric.
Simply put, it is surrender to irrationality. This is the scourge which ASUU is
fighting.
It is important to reaffirm here what ASUU demands are in the current standoff. The
demands are that the FG implements agreements in three separate documents: the
2009 Agreement; the January 24, 2012 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with
Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and the July 2012 Needs
Assessment Report on Nigeria public universities. The common elements in the
documents are that: 1) Government shall provide N1.3tr and N1.6tr funding for
addressing the rot and decay in the universities. The MoU specified N100 billion for
2012 and N400 billion for each of the three years 2013-2015. 2) Payment of
earned allowances to all staff in 24 federal universities. The allowances for July
2009 to April 2013 stand as N92b.
Government insists that ASUU must forget about the agreements because ‘they
are just on paper’. It wants to provide 100 billion for funding and N30 billion for
earned allowances on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. ASUU says no. Do note however
that even the N100 billion which source the FGN has refused to disclose is to be
taken from Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) already set aside for the
universities.
Earnest leadership elsewhere knows the significance of education. Recently,
France made public its policy to build a digital economy based on research and
training. At the turn of the Millennium, Bill Clinton made public his policy to put
every American child in school and improve the standard through systems
assessment and accountability as basic requirement for today’s world economy.
About the same time, Tony Blair made bold to say that the British would control
the information superhighway in the new century. What is the Nigerian vision?
None. The staff-student ratio of 1:30 is hardly met in our tertiary institutions and
so is the staff mix of 20 percent professorial cadre, 35 percent senior lecturers
category and 45 percent others.
Full-time staff are complimented by adjuncts and associates lecturers in order to
meet National University Commission benchmark. Now private universities
proliferate the landscape with low staff capacity and churning out deficient
graduates to justify the huge amount of money parents pay. Virtually all those in
leadership position in the country today have their children enrolled in schools
abroad. Does anyone need to go far to know why they are not bothered?
The situation in our universities today is so bad that we cannot produce globally
competitive graduates. Majority of graduates are simply unemployable. The
consequence of the FG’s imprudence is that the tertiary institutions in the country
will suffer a triple tragedy: half-baked graduates, deficiency of academic staff and
development stasis. Indeed, many of our colleagues who out of patriotism returned
to the country to help turn around the dwindling fortunes of our institutions will
return to overseas where their services are valued. Without ambiguity, political and
financial commitments are required to pull the country’s education sector out of
the woods.
Parents especially must realise that the ASUU cause is not self-serving, not about
salaries and not politically motivated; they must also resist the logical inclination
to prize their wards’ immediate plight above the collective and longer term interest
of rescuing our educational system from the brink of the abyss. Everybody must
hold the leadership accountable and demand for it to do the right thing. Indeed,
public officials wallow brazenly in affluence unchecked and to be acquiescent at
this time is to be supportive of the status quo.
The amount already earmarked for the ‘centenary celebrations’ in 2014 will
conveniently address the immediate emergencies in the educational sector. We
therefore, employ this opportunity to call on parents and well-meaning Nigerians
to appreciate the demand of ASUU and put pressure on the FGN to save education
and the future of our children.
Odion-Akahaine, Phd, is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Lagos
State University, LASU, Lagos Nigeria.

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