The relationship between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and their employers, the federal government, is reminiscent of that between a rural couple in the North in which you have a negligent husband and a naïve wife. Each time the husband defaults, and that is almost every time, the wife gathers her belongings in a small bag, put these under her arm and proceeds on a matrimonial strike or yaji as the Hausa people call it.
The objective of this matrimonial strike is that the husband will realise the value of the wife, come to his senses and come before the wife’s parents, whimpering, tail between legs, to apologise, promise to mend his ways and have his wife returned.
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That is usually the approach because the power dynamic in a traditional marriage has always remained constant. The power is wholly invested in the man and to seek redress, the woman will have to appeal to powers higher than the husband and that would be the parents if the husband has any regard for them.
Since 2009, when ASUU entered into an agreement with the government to increase budgetary allocations to the universities, among other things, the union, like the naive wife of an irresponsible husband, has on nine different occasions gathered its belongings, closed shop and returned to the parents.
The last time that happened, in 2020, students stayed at home for nine months, twiddling their fingers, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the government and the union to come to some kind of agreement to unfreeze their lives. That time, the government put up its feet on the table and proceeded, methodically, to pick its teeth, if you get the picture. Between the strike and COVID-19, the students wasted a whole academic year.
Barely a year since resumption, we are here again. Striking wife. Nonchalant husband and an incredibly drab, long-drawn-out drama that everyone, and I mean everyone, including the neighbours, is tired of.
For some reason, ASUU has failed to see that the government has no regard for the parents that it is being dragged to. The only bigger disappointment is that the government, all of them that have succeeded each other, has failed to prioritize education, which is crucial for the growth of any country.
Would it be fair to accuse the government of anti-intellectual posturing? Perhaps, yes. Even with Malam Adamu Adamu as the minister of education. He had in the past written brilliant articles dissecting the problems in the sector. I suppose many had expected that with him at the helm, those issues will be properly addressed. Sadly, it would seem that the saying that a tree does not make a forest holds in this instance. If he had been genuinely committed to addressing the problems with ASUU, especially, he has so far failed to do so. Allowing that last strike to linger for nine months was unacceptable. Saying he was “surprised” ASUU went on strike this time, when they had made it clear days before that they were going on their habitual yaji, is even more surprising.
For a body made up of intellectuals, ASUU has consistently undermined itself. It should not be the naïve wife in this unfortunate story whose victims are the thousands of students whose lives have been put on pause, yet again, and the education system as a whole.
The reality is that the entire system has been broken for a long time by government sabotage and the administrative and academic banditry being perpetrated in the universities. It has only been patched up and is being propped up like a scarecrow. Nothing is sadder than a scarecrow that doesn’t even scare away mischief-makers.
ASUU’s go-to method of propping up the system also serves to break it further. Each strike is a blow to the system. What is infuriating is that a good number of those within the ranks of ASUU have received part of their training at foreign universities. They have travelled for courses and conferences and have seen different models of running universities and how intellectuals within these functional systems operate.
Even without the government bringing a wrecking ball to the demolition party of the academic system, ASUU has been swinging away with its hammer. Those same intellectuals who are treated humanely abroad, are educated under conducive environments return to Nigeria and promptly cultivate a master-slave attitude to their interactions with their students back home. With students’ safety nets, where they exist, often compromised by these academics and school administrators, students are prey and fair game for exploitative lecturers who bandy together to exploit their students and the lapses in the dysfunctional system.
If the academics won’t fix what is within their power to fix because a broken system allows them to function like demigods, receiving obeisance, selling handouts, selling grades for sex or money without requisite accountability and the transparency required in such spaces, then how reasonable is it to expect someone else to fix it for them?
But that is not the issue in contention here. The government has failed to deliver on its promise to ASUU, for the zillionth time in history, as it had failed to deliver on its campaign promises of raising the education budget to 20 per cent as well as promises of free education at all levels for STEMs—the fact that other areas of knowledge are not especially prioritised is tragic in itself but then again, what good has this been for the “prioritised” area? But no one is keeping count because everyone is tired of oft-repeated, oft-failed promises.
Every time these things happen, ASUU goes on strike. It matters little to those in government since their children are schooling abroad, far from the torture chambers that are universities back home.
While the minister of labour announced that they had “apprehended the situation” as if it were a slinking shoe thief caught in the dark, making away with its loots, it did not have to wait until now to apprehend a thief that had duly announced itself beforehand.
The government needs to take education more seriously. The fact that it cares so little, and has demonstrated great disdain for this sector only points to how deformed its overall vision for the future of the country, if it has any, is. Funds and resources may be scarce to find for education and other vital sectors, but if it comes to politics, electioneering and huge pay packages for those running the government, these funds become instantly available. It says something.
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