Demands Of ASUU And Govt’s Intransigence: Ways Out Of The Impasse
The Oasis Reporters
September 2, 2022
By Greg Abolo
@gregabolo
@Theoasisreport1
ASUU commenced the strike with three main demands, according to a report purportedly published by The Chronicle Newspaper:
1) Revitalization of Universities.
2) Salary Raise
3) Adoption of UTAS.
Nigeria’s university lecturers carried out the strike without monthly salaries for six months, yet none of the 3 demands has been achieved.
If you are expecting ASUU to just call off the strike after passing through harsh treatment from the Federal Government, students and masses, then you must be deceiving yourself.
The government introduced nonpayment of salary arrears just to distract the attention of the masses from the core demands and they fell for it.
And don’t compare ASUU with any union or person, their reasons for going on strike are different. In fact, some joined to sabotage the efforts of ASUU.
It's time for FGN to engage in collaborative negotiations with ASUU, and in good faith. -PO
— Peter Obi (@PeterObi) August 31, 2022
Meanwhile, whenever the strike is called off, a huge chunk of the lecturers would not be found. They’ve left for greener pastures abroad.
Who would be the losers ?
Nigerian students who do not have the means to travel abroad to complete their studies.
It’s a loss on all sides, because intransigence has stepped in. Theres also the knowledge that most Nigerian university lecturers flee to universities abroad, either on the African continent or to Europe and America.
Since lecturers from other countries do not come to apply for teaching jobs here, that’s an indication that the governnent is not doing something right, but it can try.
Having visited the apartment buildings of some lecturers in the University of Ibadan, I saw first hand how decrepit many of the apartments built between fifty to seventy years ago are. Maintenance culture, or the requisite funding to adequately maintain them seems to be lacking.
I have also attended stakeholders meetings two times within two years and watched the then Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan present slides of rickety structures that nobody would bring out money to fix.
When my daughter was in her third year in that University, three of us fathers had to rent a three bedroom flat for our daughters to stay in comfortably and study, not because the money was there, but it was done because a university that has such vast land did not fulfill the part of adequate preparations to accommodate expansion and increase that is bound to be the lot of a growing population.
Why?
Lack of futuristic planning and a lack of funding. Whereas in admitting more students and properly catering for them as they pay, the University can fund most of it’s obligations
During my second stakeholders meeting that I attended, a storm had removed the roof of some buildings. There was no immediate budget to fix them.
It was shameful.
This is what I believe the government can do:
Rather than paying bandits billions of naira each time they kidnap school girls, secure the schools, deal ruthlessly with the bandits. Then settle ASUU strike first so that students can go back to classes.
Within a year or two, explore other funding models and introduce them.
There has to be a student’s loans board. Yes.
Students can take loans to fund their education.
You never can say. A philanthropist can come up one day and decide to settle loans of students in a particular institution. I saw a black philanthropist who did it in a famous University in the US a few years ago.
In Nigeria, before Seyi Makinde became governor, I watched him hand bursaries to indigent students in Ibadan two times. I went there and took photographs then.
There’s also a philanthropist doing the same thing in Gombe State. Perhaps in many other countless Communities because they feel that the nation has done very much for them when they were nothing.
So they pay back through philanthropy.
It could even be a president cancelling students loans in the future, or like multilateral organizations like the Paris Club cancelling Nigeria’s debts under the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency. It’s a gateway.
Re-imagine teaching and learning. Make Universities gear themselves towards research and production, as a bridge between gown and town. Between the academic citadel and the market.
Let Universities generate sufficient money.
Charge modest fees that must pay costs as they cut waste.
Even alumni associations should be needing validation through membership subscriptions, updated trainings and more endowments.
Take a campus like ABU Zaria for instance. It probably has between 10,000 to 30,000 students. That’s a huge market. They should drink University bottled water.
Eat University loaves of bread, drink University garri and have university beef and chicken. That’s money.
I know that the University of Ibadan has cows and a neat abattoir. But they need to run it on a larger scale. Introduce other spin-offs.
There’s so much that the Universities can do to be self-sustaining. The time to start implementing them is now. But first, let them be settled to enable them to resume immediately. Nigeria cannot afford to have students out of school.
Greg Abolo
gregabolo@gmail.com
