By Adeagbo Ademola.
Of all the pressure groups in Nigeria, ASUU is the most outstanding, enduring, persistent, and the most suffered one. Since 1999, ASUU has embarked on industrial strike for 15 times that cumulatively amount to four years. Meaning that, in 21 years, our universities have been on lockdown for four academic years.
Little wonders why Nigerian Universities fall short on the ranking list of world universities and Nigerians – that have gone through the Nigerian education system – struggle to complete favorably with their counterparts all over the world.
Obviously, Nigerian teachers, including lecturers, are the most affected set of individuals with the poor governance of the present and the past administrations. While other public servants get salary increment without much ado, salary increment, allowances, and conducive working conditions are usually pushed for, by ASUU, through industrial strikes.
ASUU demands are always simple, clear, and reasonable. Improvement to the current (poor) state of education in the country by funding for revitalization of public universities, the release of the forensic audit report on Earned Academic Allowances (EAA), payments of all arrears of shortfalls in salaries of all universities that have met the requirements of the Presidential Initiative on Continuum Audit (PICA) and release of university pension fund operational are legit demands any populist government could swiftly have granted.
Like any other pressure groups in Nigeria, the Nigerian government has never been sincere in dealing with ASUU. For instance, the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 by both the union and the federal government stipulated that “the public varsities would need the sum of #1.3 trillion for a modest revitalization.”
The agreement has it that the fund would be paid in tranches of 20billion in 2013 and 220 billion between 2014 and 2018. To date, the FG has not implemented this five-year arrangement and this is the route cause of the continuous loggerheads.
For this, it may be right to say if not for the persistence, tenacity, determination, and the doggedness of ASUU that have continuously suffered public humiliation for their intermittent strike, Nigerian educational sector – especially universities – would have collapsed and the private ones, owned by the men in politics, would have taken over.
Unlike, the pettifogging NLC that takes junks to satisfy their personal interests at the detriment of the collective interests of the general public, ASUU fights for the public, rejects tuition fees, demands for better equipment, and begs for conducive learning environment. ASUU never succumbed to any kind of threats, abuse and humiliations no matter the pressure.
Even when the union was being blackmailed and their demands being twisted to give them a bad reputation before the public, the union stood firm against all evils including our badmouthing ministers for education.
If not for ASUU, Nigerian public universities would have either gone into extinction or become unaffordable for the children of the poor. Many people, including this writer, that had graduated with the little they earn from their hustle would never have stepped into universities.
If not for ASUU’s steadfastness, some of us would have turned criminals or some motor packs’ thugs. ASUU deserves all the commendations.
For the government that has the reputation for negotiating with gun-wielding bandits and terrorists, the same government found it hard to negotiate with armless university teachers and had them starved for 9 months. History will never forget.
In a country that thugs, bandits, and terrorists – predominantly illiterates – get juicy treatment and appointments from the government, this is enough determinant to influence the youths’ juxtaposition of becoming a jobless graduate or a successful thug.
Today as ASUU won against IPPIS to retain university autonomy, I believe the union will maintain the chastity within the university communities.
Adeagbo Ademola is an unemployed graduate of Mass Communication and he writes from Lagos. He could be reached through 08109224060
