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Between The Federal Government And ASUU  by Adebola Makinde

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Students in public universities are stuck between the conflict heralded by the two major determining powers of their academic journey — the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). They are the major determinants because they possess regulatory powers. It can, however, be argued back and forth but, in the long run, it’ll be discovered that the ASUU strike, which is a result of the unsettled conflict between these powers has handicapped the future of some students, in other words, it has slowed down the (academic) journey of undergraduates in public-owned Nigerian universities.

Amidst this hiatus that breeds uncertainty, the contention of whom to blame is not usually debated. It wouldn’t take long before a great number of people support the Federal Government’s decision not to attend to ASUU, and at other times, the Federal Government would own the blame.

ASUU started operation in 1978 as a body of intellectuals in Nigeria’s federal and state universities. Beyond association, it has found an unofficial way to regulate education in Nigeria. Prior to 2009, ASUU embarked on strikes, therefore, to state that the 2009 FG-ASUU agreement was the nascent cause of the persistent strikes. This is tricky and even unbelievable. Even if FG settles debts owed to the body, wouldn’t they still find reasons to go on strike?

The 2009 FG-ASUU agreement, a deceptive tool that lacks ingenuity is being touted as the reason for the strike. The agreement which includes: improved welfare, revitalisation of public universities and replacement of Universities Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) with the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS) in rational reasoning is not too much to demand. I believe the main reason for the strike is the long due debt. However, where has this debt come from?

In 2015, when the current President Muhammdu Buhari was elected, it met a provision for 10.7 percent of the national budget was earmarked for education by the former President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, remaining the highest in the last decade. Ever since, it has faced a decline in allocation.

“In 2016, the allocation was N369. 6 billion or 7.9 percent of the total budget; N550. 5 billion in 2017 representing 7.4 percent of the total budget; N605.8 billion in 2018 or 7.04 percent; N620.5 billion or 7.05 percent in 2019 and N671. 07 billion or 6.7 percent in 2020,” Premium Times reported.

Meanwhile, the range of allocation before 2015 was around 9 to 10 percent; “In 2011, education got N393.8 billion or 9.3 percent of the total budget; N468.3 billion or 9.86 per cent in 2012; N499.7 billion or 10.1 percent in 2013; N494.7 billion or 10.5 percent in 2014; and N484.2 billion or 10.7 percent in 2015.”

Under Buhari’s administration, the highest allocation to the education sector is 7.9 percent of the 2022 total budget of 16.39 trillion. The 1.29 trillion allocated to the sector still remains behind the 15 to 20 percent the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recommended for developing countries; it is even less than 10 percent after a 50 percent increase of the 2021 allocation.

In 2021, out of the N13.08 trillion budget, only N742.5 billion or 5.68 percent was allocated to the sector remaining the lowest in the decade.

It is obvious that the allocation made to education is usually petty and wouldn’t cover the necessary things. For example, if the allocation made to education is at least 15 per cent or more, there’ll only be less debts to cover and in fact, ASUU wouldn’t go on strike if they notice the Federal government’s effort.

Before the agreement, ASUU had gone on several strike actions. In 1999 for five months; 2001 for three months; 2002 for two weeks; 2003 for six months; 2005 for two weeks; 2006 for three days; 2007 for three months and 2008 for one week. In May 2008, it held two one-week “warning strikes” to press a range of demands, including an improved salary scheme and reinstatement of 49 lecturers who were dismissed many years earlier (in the University of Ilorin) — which proves there are certain times the union embark on strikes which is not debt oriented however, the union has always employed strike action to express their grievances.

By rational assessment, it is unfair to not have salaries of these individuals paid. As much as ASUU is a union, it is constituted of, and by individuals who also need to earn income like any other regular individual.

ASUU’s persistent policy of strike is demeaning and destructive because students who have had a planned future would find it hard to move on with an uncertain calendar. In fact, many Nigerian university undergraduates are leaving their schools to pursue a better education in privately owned universities and other states (countries) of the world which would amount to brain drain.

The government on its own part is not doing enough to alleviate issues. For more than 10 years, the union’s debt hasn’t been sorted out despite their aggressive clamour even to the extent of staking students’ future. Is it not safe to say the administrationS since 2009 have been inconsiderate and uncaring about education in Nigeria?

I had hoped to not ever experience the ASUU strike until it caught up with me. I heard about ASUU strike even before I finished my secondary school education and yet, the government is proving incapable to settle the demands of the union.

In a bid for a better education sector, ASUU should find other means to express its grievances instead of staking the future of students.

Strictly Personal

Off we go again with public shows, humbug and clowning, By Jenerali Uliwengu

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The potential contestants in the approaching elections are already sizing themselves up and assessing their chances of fooling their people enough for them to believe that they are truly going to “bring development” to them.

 

I mean, you have to be a true believer to believe that someone who says they have come to offer their services to you as your representative in the local council or in the national parliament and they tell you that they are going to build your roads to European standards, and your schools are going to be little Eatons; your hospitals are going to be better and more lavishly equipped than the Indian hospitals, where many of our high-placed people go for treatment, and your water supply will be so regular that you have to worry only about drowning!

 

I mean no exaggeration here, for the last time we had the occasion to listen to such clowns — five years ago — we heard one joker promise he would take all his voters to the United States for a visit.

 

He was actually voted to parliament, or at least the cabal acting as the electoral commission says he was. He has never revisited that promise as far as I can remember, but that must surely be because he is still negotiating with the American embassy for a few million visas for his voters!

 

Yes, really, these are always interesting times, when normally sober people turn out to be raving mad and university dons become illiterate.

 

Otherwise tell me how this can happen: Some smart young man or woman shows up in your neighbourhood and puts up posters and erects stands and platforms for the campaign and goes around the constituency declaring his or her ardent desire to “develop” your area by bringing in clean and safe water, excellent schools, competent teachers, the best agricultural experts as extension officers, etc, etc.

These goodies

At the time this clown is promising all these goodies, you realise he has been distributing money and items such as tee-shirts, kitenge prints, khangas, caps as well as organising feeding programmes, where everyone who cares can feed to satiation and drink whatever they want with practically no limitation.

Seriously, I have been asking myself this question: Would you employ a young man who shows up at your front porch and tells you he is seeking a job to develop your garden and tells you that, while you are thinking whether to employ him, “Here is money for you and your family to eat and drink for now!”

Now, if we think such a man should be reported to the police or taken to a mental institution, why are we behaving in exactly the same way?

Many a time we witness arguments among countrymen trying to solve the conundrum of our continued failure to move forward economically, despite our abundant resources, and it seems like we haven’t got a clue.

But is this not one of the cues, if not probably the most important clue, that we have not found a way to designate our leaders?

It ought to be clear to any person above childhood that this type of electoral system and practice can never deliver anything akin to development or progress.

Now, consider that we have being doing this same thing over and over — in many of our countries elections follow a certain periodicity like clockwork — but we have not discovered the truth.

Put simply, our politics is badly rigged against our people, and elections have become just devices to validate the political hooliganism of the various cabals running our countries like so many Mafia families.

Knee-jerk supporters

We have so demeaned our people, whom we have turned into knee-jerk supporters of whoever gives them food and drink around election time, that now they say that at least at election time it is their turn to eat, which means, naturally, that at all other times it is the turn of the ones who “bring development” to the people.

Clearly, this is not working, and it is no wonder that dissatisfaction and frustration are rife, as our people cannot put a finger to the thing that holds them back.

Apart from these sham elections, from time to time, the rulers organise shows designed to make the people believe that somebody is concerned about their problems.

We have one such masquerade happening in Tanzania right now, where public meetings are organised so people can vent their frustration. But these will never solve any problems; they are just shows.

If the elections we have been holding had any substance, there would not be any need for such public shows, except those organised by those people we elected.

Where are they? What is the use of spending so much money and other resources to erect and maintain a political system that has to be propped by public shows, where people come to vent their grievances over the hopelessness of the system in place?

I am just asking.

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Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

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“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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