If you think that the ongoing drama between the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Federal Government is unique to Nigeria, then you are wrong. This is because as we will demonstrate shortly, what currently obtains in Nigeria is also at play in other places, like Ghana, the United Kingdom, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
What can be made of this disturbing similarity and coincidence is that almost everywhere in the African continent, and as demonstrated in these countries, minimum attention is placed on knowledge generation and transmission. Perhaps, the only exception here is the UK.
Even though this social formation is a declining power, she continues to play host to some of the best universities in the world. Her case is clearly different from the others in this piece. At least, her academics continue to engage, within limits, in cutting-edge research.
Moreover, she is not really on her own in the comity of nations as far as knowledge is concerned. The kith and kin factor enables her to keep abreast of developments in places like the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
So, no one should smirk and say that the UK is in the same league with Nigeria and these other unfortunate African countries. Still, it should be mentioned here that academics in the UK have since gone on strike over welfare conditions.
As regards Nigeria, it appears that the perverse gold medal belongs to her. For in what looks like a recurring decimal, Nigerian university teachers are at the barricades again.
Indeed, the street wisdom is that ASUU, rightly or wrongly, is known as a union whose hallmark is the strike option. This time around, it looks as if there is a novel dimension to the entire, and we dare say, familiar situation.
Unlike in the past, when ASUU focused on public-spirited matters, the issue at the moment centres crucially and mainly on the welfare of its members.
On a television programme, the ASUU chairman of the UNILAG branch made this point graphically when he revealed that a professor’s salary can be found in the region of N416,000 per month. The anchor men of the television station were aghast. “How so?”, they asked.
And in the bid to clarify this, one of them prodded further that: “Are you saying N416,000 or N460,000? Whereupon the ASUU chieftain, for emphasis and clarity, repeated what he had just said.
Again, in the bid to reconfirm what has just been revealed, another one asked: “Are you saying this is just the basic salary, minus the allowances?”. Again the ASUU chieftain repeated what he had just said.
We have gone into these details to demonstrate that this indeed is the crux of the current matter as regards the ongoing face-off between the union and the government.
And it can be authoritatively revealed here that the ASUU leadership is having to contend with its own problems. There are murmurs from below that the leadership has done enough of posturing at the level of public spiritedness. The issue now is: what is the take-home pay of the university lecturer in Nigeria?
And in view of the dialectical linkage between the leadership and the led, the ASUU hierarchy cannot afford to ignore the noise from below. If one may be frank here, it is useful to appreciate that the subsisting agreement provided for a situation in which there should have been a salary review from as far back as 2009 and every three years.
But till date, nothing has happened, which is why it may well be possible to put the blame on ASUU itself. What was the union doing since 2009? In any case, given the nature of our state officials, they will not take it upon themselves to review this agreement. The attitude seems to be: if you decided to sleep on your rights, then too bad!!!
Much of what we have said so far goes a long way to explain the studied aloofness of ASUU to the government’s latest move.
It will be recalled here that yet another committee has been put in place to renegotiate the subsisting agreement. Rightly or wrongly, this is viewed by ASUU as another ploy by the government to stall on their legitimate demands. And this is where government is not getting it.
Read also: ASUU strike: FG, ASUU trade-blames over impasse
As a knowledge-based union, ASUU is in the know about certain variables. That, for instance, a permanent secretary in the federal civil service takes home a handsome pay of at least one million naira per month. Clearly, the Nigerian professor has been stranded and abandoned.
These same feelings appear to characterise the moods and attitudes of the university teachers in Ghana. They are not only griping about low pay, they are also contending that their research allowances are too low.
Here again, as in Nigeria, there is a very interesting, if bewildering, interplay between the leaders and the followers. At a point in time in the ongoing crisis in Ghana, the leadership signed a pact with the government that the strike was over, and that the teachers will resume.
But the dons are saying no, that they will not be lured into the classrooms with watery promises. Again matters have not been helped by the fact that the country spent a whopping sum of $25 million on its participation in the recently-concluded African football tournament in Cameroon. Yet, as the teachers have argued, minimal attention is being paid to university education.
In Kenya, a similar situation is on. In what appears to be an isolated situation, Edgerton University in Njoro has been under lock and key for the past six months.
As usual, the lecturers’ protest revolves around salary cuts. Specifically, the grouse of the Kenyan dons is that the university imposed a 40 percent salary cut. In doing this, the university cited limited funds in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And despite a court order, which stipulated resumption and full payment, the lecturers are yet to resume at their duty posts.
According to the dons, the university is yet to fulfill its own part of the agreement. Possibly to worsen matters, the university has since suspended 14 union officials for mobilising their colleagues to go on strike. Evidently, the authorities are yet to learn that heavy-handed tactics will not do.
Such draconian measures have been used in Nigeria in the past but the problem has not gone away. So one can only hope here that in due course, the Kenyan authorities will learn.
As it is, a bug appears to be spreading around the continent. This is because a similar face-off is on in the DRC. In this particular social formation, the teachers went on strike at the beginning of the year.
Among other things, their grievances centered, as usual, on poor salaries and unfair treatment by the authorities. According to them their monthly salary is 120 times less than that of a member of parliament.
To a Nigerian, this must sound very familiar, but even then, we appear to have digressed. And as if to worsen matters, this salary is less than that of a driver or gardener working in the corporate offices.
What becomes evident from much of the foregoing is that these African countries are yet to appreciate that their underdevelopment is partly rooted in their cavalier attitude towards education.
Whereas this is in reality a low hanging fruit, which can easily be plucked in the bid to catch up with the developed countries. Indeed, such is the attention of the developed countries to education that they view their universities as positive national symbols.
They have even moved beyond this attentive phase to ensure that their universities can be used as platforms for soft power in global politics.
In this instance, they talk with gusto about their Oxbridge, Harvard and the like. The pertinent point here is: can we say the same about our own universities in Africa?
The answer comes in a resounding ‘No!’ Incidentally, the only exception here is in South Africa, where we have top-class universities like Stellenbosch and the University of Cape Town.
There is an ironic twist here. These world-class institutions were put in place by the then much-reviled Boers, the apostles of the apartheid system. At the moment, history seems to have come full circle.
The anti-apartheid apostles in contemporary times have a lot to learn from the Boers who have successfully put in place world-class universities as part of the South African state system.
Clearly, the likes of Mandela, Nyerere and our own Murtala Mohammed – all of them implacable foes of apartheid – will not be smiling in their graves.
For to our eternal shame, we in the rest of Africa appear to be studying at the feet of the Boers as regards how to run potent and vibrant university systems.
