A memo to ASUU and FG negotiators (II)

This week I continue with a guest columnist sharing his views on my space. I hope you find it interesting.

By Moses E. Ochonu

The corrective intervention needed in the perennial strike-and-negotiate culture is for ASUU to be made to realize that most problems of the Nigerian higher education system cannot be solved by merely throwing more money are them. In fact, one could argue that greater funding in the last two and half decades has contributed to the problem by creating unforeseen issues of corruption, poor ethics, and absence of accountability.

Speaking of accountability, there is now none in the university system. One of the issues in contention in the current strikes is a demand by ASUU for the records of the disbursement of needs assessment funds to universities to be made public. The unstated subtext in this demand is a credible belief on the part of ASUU members that their universities’ Vice Chancellors, abetted by governing boards, are either sitting on or misappropriating the funds meant for paying some of their earned allowances.

The depth and breadth of the problem vary from university to university, but Vice Chancellors are implicated everywhere. This is both an internal and external issue, so blaming the FG alone is not going to cut it. It is true that Vice Chancellors are appointed by the Federal Government, but the process that throws up finalists for the position from among the rank of senior academics – ASUU members – is controlled by lecturers and superintended by ASUU.

Similarly, it is true that university board members and VCs are political appointees beholden to political godfathers. It is also true that the lobbying that precedes the appointments of VCs and boards mirrors the politics of patronage in the larger body politic, and that as a result VCs and boards see their positions as conduits for patronage and tools for amassing illicit wealth. Nonetheless, there is no rule that prevents ASUU and lecturers from confronting these VCs, localizing the struggle by fighting against the corruption of proximate university administrators.

It seems that this local corruption, rather than inadequate funding, is the problem. It is what prevents funds released by the FG from getting to lecturers and their projects for which they are meant. There may also be a problem of the FG not releasing certain promised funds. This should be fought at the central level. This way, both internal and external culprits are held accountable.

In any case, if, as ASUU suspects, the problem is largely one of local university administrators gobbling up released funds through the connivance of governing boards then a localized struggle against these forces would seem to be more effective than a centralized one focused on securing yet more funding that would be funnelled through this corrupt cesspool of university administrative structures. Sometimes, identifying the problem or the culprit of a problem is half the battle. The Vice Chancellors escape ASUU’s wrath but it’s not clear if that is because they are or were academic comrades or because they are appointees of the FG and so the logic is to battle the appointer rather than the appointee.

Either way, VC’s have become a part of the problem of higher education and must be confronted. ASUU would do well to fight for internal transparency in universities. This fight for transparency should not be limited to funding issues. Today, sometimes with the active collusion of governing boards, and in a move replicative of what goes on in the political arena, VCs routinely offer academic jobs to grossly unqualified candidates who happen to be their friends, family members, or members of their political orbit. Heads of Departments routinely get phone calls from VCs telling them that to accommodate a newly employed lecturer in their departments. Some come to their offices to find a newly hired member of the department with an appointment letter asking to be given an office and to be assigned courses.

This rampant corruption of irregular recruitment into the academic ranks is at the heart of the deteriorating standards in teaching, research, and supervision. Thousands of lecturers who do not have the ability, temperament, or discipline for academia got their jobs this way and are doing pedagogical damage in university classrooms across the country.

Why is ASUU not fighting against this menace, this abuse of power and process by VCs? This is the reason why the massive fund injection into universities in the last 18 years or so have, rather than improve standards and quality of instruction, done the opposite and impoverished the quality of graduates.

Increasingly, unqualified but connected people are joining the ranks of lecturers and then enjoying the protection that ASUU offers to dues-paying members. Instead of fighting VCs to rectify this problem and helping to craft rigorous recruiting processes, ASUU has been subsidizing and protecting mediocre beneficiaries of a corrupt recruitment system tied to VCs, only to then turn around to routinely blame the resulting problem of falling standards on “funding” – that nebulous, all-purpose culprit of ASUU propaganda.

Again, universities are not only about buildings and increased remunerations. They are about the quality of instruction and research. If ASUU cares about these two indicators, it has not shown it and has been blaming the wrong factors and sparing the culprits. It needs to redirect some of its ire to the local university administrators that are clearly frustrating transparency and due process in the university system, leaving a trail of disgruntled lecturers and poorly educated graduates.

As for the FG, it’s incompetent negotiating team must begin making demands on ASUU in exchange for the concessions it makes to the union. There is also no point making concessions that cannot be implemented unless one is acting in bad faith. A realistic set of concessions that converges with ASUU’s own acceptance of FG demands modelled on the listed points above should make the implementation of agreements more plausible and less painful.

Concluded

Ochonu wrote from Nashville, Tennessee, USA