For decades now, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been engaged in relentless struggle for the survival of university education suffering from the snares of irresponsible ruling elite. The struggle has been raging since the mid 1980s under the competent leadership of Dr. Mahmud Tukur of blessed memory. Tukur brought his wealth of knowledge of Nigerian history and political economy to expose the neocolonial character of the ruling elite and their blind submission to the injurious dictations of western leaders who are only interested in pushing imperialist agendas in the so called former colonies. In his pathology of the relationships between colonialism and neocolonialism, the twin evils of imperialist subjugation, Frantz Fanon has identified colonial conquest of lands and peoples of Africa as some form of incurable disease, which needs nothing less than total destruction. Colonial legacies and development paradigms are no longer working. Africa therefore needs to extricate itself from the strictures of colonial subjugation in all spheres of development in order to forge ahead in its socio-economic, cultural and political trajectories. Little surprise that the intractability of ASUU struggle for the survival of university education is hamstrung by the limitations neocolonial system imposes on the ideology, value orientations and even the visions of the leaders produced by such a system.
It was the leadership of Professor Atttahiru Jega in the early 1990s that imprinted ASUU on the psyche of Nigerians, especially under the dictatorial impulses of the military regime led by General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Under Professors Jega and Asisi Asobie the will and resolve of the members of the academic union were tested beyond limits of endurance through the constant harassment, intimidation, denials of salaries for months on end. All the inhuman measures deployed against ASUU were meant to force the Union to accept government terms or ideas of reforming university education. Meanwhile, government notion of university reform is always sourced externally from those powerful western countries that are only interested in perpetuating Africa’s dependence on them in everything we do as a nation. Since then, not much has changed. The Union is still having running battles with government on the decaying facilities, conditions of service of university academics and academic freedom, which the serial military regimes were doing everything possible to deny the system. Between government and ASUU, it is still a repeat of the cat and mouse game characteristic of the past despite the transition to democratic rule. Though things were expected differently from a democratic system, but our civilian government is still behaving like the military one of yesteryears in handling the education of our children.
Despite the unpredictable mien of President Olusegun Obasanjo and his aversion for university lecturers, the Union has recorded some remarkable achievements under him. The successes recorded by ASUU under Obasanjo would have been consolidated with President Umaru Musa Yar’adua if not for his unfortunate demise. President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan grudgingly accepted to come to the negotiating table with ASUU but only for him to renege fulfilling most of what the government agreed to do as its own part of the bargain. The outstanding disputes between ASUU and the federal government have of course lingered, and were eventually inherited by President Muhammadu Buhari. Expectedly, the new APC government cannot claim it was not aware of the uneasy relations between ASUU and the federal government, after all there is continuity in a number of policies between previous and current regimes. Although President Buhari’s regime started from the point when the Nigerian economy was declining from the corruption, mismanagement and recklessness of the previous government, ASUU has demonstrated lots of patience by extending its goodwill and understanding on the assumption that the new APC government is going to be different through especially its anti-corruption rhetoric.
ASUU was even upbeat because it has some of its key cadres, activists and friends in some of the most strategic parastatals of the federal ministry of education. In the earlier days of the government the relationship between ASUU and the government was chummy, with even the Executive Secretary of TETFUND Dr Baffa Bichi, a former branch Chairman of ASUU himself, running from pillar to post reassuring his former comrades to sheath their swords of grievances. In the logic of former comrades who crossover from academic system in the Nigerian university to a new bureaucratic life in government ministries and departments, ASUU should be rest assured of harmonious relations with government. In fact, the TETFUND Chief wanted a situation in which ASUU considers the APC government as a partner in progress, as one that will not deceive the Union in its dealings with it, but that is however not to be the case. After the initial exchanges of pleasantries between the APC government and ASUU, it is beginning to dawn on ASUU that government officials should not be trusted wholeheartedly in labor matters, no matter what their relationship with the Union. ASUU, more than anyone, should have known better from its jealously guarded principles of not trusting any bureaucrat, not even its former members that are now in government.
Dealing with people that are seemingly sympathetic to ASUU, should not warrant ignoring its old traditions of strict adherence to principles of collective bargain. This is what is earning respect, credibility and integrity for the Union, and the respect it enjoys amongst its members and those that share in the ideals of its struggle to restore the lost glory of university education in Nigeria. The Union cannot afford to operate on the basis of friendship or personal acquaintances but strictly on official basis with people that are paid to defend government position, whosoever they are. Already, the cozy relationship cultivated at the initial stages of the encounter between ASUU and the federal government led by President Muhammadu Buhari is now beginning to show serious signs of stress. And amidst this conundrum, the friends of the Union who promised to ensure government implementation of its obligations the other time the Union embarked on warning strikes are nowhere to be seen. Apparently, the government has boxed itself into a corner precisely because of its fiddling with neo-liberal policies that are expressly designed to emasculate public education. Thus, the idea of proliferating private universities and charging prohibitive school fees to even the majority of Nigerians that cannot afford it, which the government is dying to implement in federal universities, are all part of the same package.
At stake now is an impending strike. There are unwarranted difficulties to get negotiations between government and ASUU to take off in earnest as promised by government in the memorandum of understanding it signed with the Union at the beginning of 2017. For all intents and purposes, the 2017-2018 renegotiation meetings between ASUU and government have collapsed. And, as usual, the negotiations are collapsing due to the refusal of the government team to sit and engage the Union in frank and honest brokerage. Government officials usually demonstrate negative attitude whenever they are privileged to get involved in collective bargains on behalf of government, especially in contexts where a party that is perceived weak is involved. The souring of relations between ASUU and government was accentuated by government’s breach in its implementation of outstanding issues concerning government obligations to own universities, and the payment of backlog allowances agreed upon between the contending parties. In case the government has forgotten, it even made public the idea of staggering earned allowances of ASUU members from the beginning of 2018 financial year.
But the government is flagrantly refusing to become a serious broker in its dealings with ASUU. According to a recent press release by ASUU in which it claims that it “has tried through several entreaties to make him see reason and return to the path of collective bargaining and respect for the Constitutional provisions on Education to no avail. The Chairman of the Government team has amply demonstrated that his interest is to force ASUU to accept the dependence of the education of our youth on debts whereas the Constitution promises free education. Since March 2017, a period of over fourteen (14) months discussion has hovered only on funding and Babalakin’s insistence that a tuition regime must be introduced into the public universities in Nigeria”. This is the crux of the matter. And from the unwillingness on the part of government we can deduce that there is no sincerity to reach any genuine agreement in its negotiation with ASUU. However, the worrying dimension of this perennial struggle to rescue our university system from the clutches of business model of education touted by neoliberal globalization is in how even some of the champions of people oriented social transformation, even from within the ranks of ASUU, are now accepting the destructive proclivities of such imperialism of theory.
