Varsity students lose over 2 years six months cumulatively to ASUU strikes

Universities’ academic calendar since 1981 has been regularly disrupted by the Academic Staff Union of Universities’ (ASUU) strikes in pursuit of fair wages and university autonomy.

The total number of time lost to ASUU strikes since 1981 is approximately two years and six months about 4, 320 working hours; practically every year since the ‘80s has been marked by strike, BusinessDay’s findings show.

Some of the reasons for these strikes have been conflict between ASUU and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities on salary parity, poor implementation of agreement by the Federal Government, review of salaries, review of fringe benefits and allowances, increased university autonomy among others.

The effects of these strikes include: deteriorating quality of graduates from Nigerian universities since time lost due to strikes that should be used for delivering the curriculum is not recovered. The other effect is loss of revenue to universities. Many potential students prefer universities in neighbouring African countries including Ghana, Benin and Togo because of these countries have stable academic calendar.

“It is unfortunate that in Nigeria education and in particular our universities are not factored into the long-term national development plan. There is little or no synergy between the gown and town” said Dauda Yunus, associate professor of management at the Lagos State University, Ojo.

Yunus added “at a recent conference for universities in Germany, I was pleasantly surprised to realise the person sitting on the chair in front of me was Germany’s minister of education. In Nigeria the situation is different; the government tends to see university lecturers as adversaries, not partners in nation-building.”

Ike Mowete, a professor of Electrical and Electronics engineering at the University of Lagos contends that ASUU should take the plight of students seriously when making decisions to go on strike.

“There are good and dedicated academic staff members in our tertiary institutions and I respect them. Now, the flip side of the coin is that there are many who do not really mind whatever happens to students, they care mostly about their welfare as lecturers. I never supported ASUU strikes when I was a young lecturer and radical because of some fundamental principles and I am not about to start doing so in my old age” he said.