THE AAUA turned up prominently during the ASUU strike as one which resumed classes while others held on. Why was this so?
First, ours is a state, not a federal university, so there is a limit to which we ordinarily should be affected by ASUU’s struggle with the Federal Government. In a federal republic that Nigeria is supposed to be, this is not something we can take for granted.
Secondly, the truth is that some elements of the FGN-ASUU Agreement were already being implemented here at AAUA before the strike action; a fact that ordinarily should have advised a different approach to the national strike here. Thirdly, the way and manner the local leadership of ASUU here prosecuted the whole strike enterprise, it was as if it was an action against the university administration here, and a good number of people, members of ASUU-AAUA, were not quite comfortable with that. But you know, there is this spirit of camaraderie that everybody wants to showcase, so that when the local leadership was clearly going beyond its bounds and doing things that were clearly difficult to defend, even those who were uncomfortable with such still managed to put up with all of that – as some of them told us, in the interest of the union. Attempts were actually made to ensure that nothing got done here, as against the situation prevalent in several federal universities where activities other than teaching students went on unimpeded. Indeed, things were so bad here that somebody jokingly wondered whether ASUU had a trophy for the branch chairperson most disruptive of operations in their university! It was that bad.
It was against this backdrop that we announced resumption for November 25. To the glory of God, we resumed – I mean as at the last count, about 90 per cent of our lecturers resumed and more than 70 per cent of my students had had two weeks of lectures before the Federal Government and ASUU eventually initialled the fresh agreement. So, I guess these must be the basis of the prominence you said AAUA had during the strike action.
Don’t you see ASUU sanctioning your lecturers for backing out?
I don’t think ASUU gave any of the lecturers job. They qualify for membership in the first instance by reason of their being employees of the university. And at any event, ASUU is supposed to be a democratic organisation where you are not compelled on anything. If members of ASUU in a branch, adults and well-educated people all, were convinced they had enough of a strike at some point, I doubt if it would not run against the grain of the advertised commitment to democratic practice to talk of sanctioning them.
So what is going to happen to those who refused to heed your call to resume?
Nothing is going to happen to them. I mean, if you asked people to come back to work and you had a 90 per cent success rate, you can afford to disregard the proclivities of the 10 per cent that for whatever reason chose not to respond.
You seem not to be too convinced on the use of strike action as a weapon in the industrial crisis. Why are you so persuaded and what options do you suggest to enable labour-based pressure groups achieve their aims?
The answer is clear. ASUU has called strike actions of different duration and for different reasons, some of them sympathy strike, virtually every year since 1982. If in spite of that we still had need for a six-month strike in 2013, as a student of society and development, what this implies, without any argument, is that the strike action has not been effective. Secondly, you need to know the nature of the challenges those of us saddled with the problem of running the universities face on daily basis trying to cope with the reality of instability to begin to understand why many Vice Chancellors, not just this one, are against strike action. The truth is that for as long as we do not have stability in our operations, for as long as our operations remain incurably unpredictable, for so long shall global respectability elude Nigerian universities. You cannot predict when academic sessions are going to start and be concluded.
It is simply unacceptable. You cannot therefore really strike partnership deals with sister universities abroad. You cannot begin to talk seriously of recruiting foreign students and scholars. You cannot even ask investors to put their monies into what you have doing since nobody is sure when the next forced lockdown would happen, and for how long.
And this is why for me, what we have today is an epic battle between scholars and unionists for the soul of higher education in Nigeria. The resolution of the six-month old strike that was announced a couple of days ago has really not solved the problem, for as I have often said, while money is a critical element in the whole equation, a good chunk of the problem bedevilling the university system today is attitudinal, the attitude and mind-set of lecturers in particular who have now seen their union as the alternative governance structure of the universities.And to add insult to injury, you now have a whole generation of junior scholars whose perception of scholarship and academics is as defined by unions under whom they are wont to seek protection and to whom they make recourse rather than do scholarship and research. Needless to say how dangerous for our higher education this is.
The cause of the matter is decayed infrastructure as ASUU makes us to believe. Do you have stoves for Bunsen burners in AAUA?
Well, infrastructure in many universities are in a bad shape. But this is not something that happened yesterday. It is rather an accumulation of several years of neglect. At AAUA, by the time we complete and take delivery of our Senate building and the 30-Classroom Quadrangle, hopefully later this year, we would not have any major challenge with office, laboratory and classroom space for at least the next five years, provided we keep our eyes on our capacity in relation to student admission. But because we are committed to a carefully laid-out programme of expansion, we would continue to deploy funds to build new lecture theatres, classrooms and laboratories. We also are committed to deploying more funds to equipping our laboratories to enhance research.
To your specific question, we do not improvise with stoves here. I am sure you are referring to the reports of the Needs Assessment Committee in relation to some universities. What was identified as the key challenge for my university is the less than appropriate condition in which students live off-campus; and we are addressing that now by trying to get more bed space on campus. As we speak now, two new halls of residence are nearing completion – one by NDDC and the other by OSOPADEC. More importantly, about three weeks ago, we laid the foundation of another hostel facility that is expected to provide 12,000 bed spaces before the end of next year – under a PPP arrangement.
How would the VCs make the students gain back the time lost to the five-month strike since the lecturers are getting their arrears paid?
Unfortunately, we do not have much of a choice here. The required number of lecture-weeks must be adhered to. On our new academic calendar which commenced November 25, the second semester of 2012/2013 ends on March 29, 2014. So the students are not really losing anything in terms of number of months of lectures, etc. But then, poor kids, they have all lost about six months of their life to the national strike. And talking seriously, I should think that some students should go to court to ask for damages from their lecturers or whomever, especially if their lecturers get paid for the time they were on strike and did not work. In that context it would seem to me that students whose time was wantonly wasted should test our jurisprudence by going to court to ask these teachers for damages. Let’s see how it plays out. Whatever we need to do to put a stop to this strike business is much welcome.
How can we avert this type of scenario in future?
I had suggested to ASUU things like engagement of professional lobbyists to take up our issues. There is also the issue of political engagement with government that would make us as a Union able to influence the choice of at least the Education Minister from time to time. Unfortunately, most students today do not respect their lecturers, well, most lecturers have not earned the respect of their students, otherwise the students would have been a powerful resource base for ASUU in the context of democratic governance and the need for politicians to have votes. So if ASUU can find a way to burnish the image of their members with their students, a powerful alliance it would be between staff and students to influence the direction of elections in specific constituencies, and indeed, if well calibrated, across the nation too.
I also feel that we as a nation need to look very well at the way Margaret Thatcher stood up to the unions when the UK was at a similar crossroad in the past. Thatcher has a great fan in me, anyway, and I would recommend her principled stance against frivolous union agitation any day. Her firmness saved the British economy from outright collapse after several years of union blackmail, the type that is abroad in Nigeria today - a situation in which at the slightest excuse, you have unions mouthing some ill-digested ideological propositions and proclaiming and/or threatening strike action on things that ordinarily should be handled via negotiation.
Source: Nigerian Tribune
0 comments
Post a Comment