BackpageASUU Must Find Alternative to Protracted Strikes

ASUU Must Find Alternative to Protracted Strikes

THEWILL APP ADS 2

From Monday, February 14 to Monday, August 29, 2022 the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will have been on strike for 196 days, which translates to six and a half months. In terms of active academic sessions, that is two semesters of continuous industrial action that can never be recovered. It will, by implication, elongate the academic programme of every student currently in school and probably stall their expected date of graduation.

Those who had calculated their pros and cons for deciding to get tertiary education and who mapped out what it will cost them must, for the umpteenth time, make further adjustments to those calculations with uncertainty still hovering on the horizon.

The cause of this uncertainty is the reticent nature of ASUU’s leadership and their decision to stick to their guns and not give an inch until their demands are met. The Union, which was founded in 1978 to cater for the interests of all academic staff in Federal and State universities in Nigeria, has had a long history of protracted industrial actions against successive governments and have over time built a resilient experience with a resolve to stick to their guns until their demands are fulfilled.

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While there are benefits to be accrued from protests against governments in the country that have historically shown to be unmoved by non-confrontational engagements, there is a very real danger in the concept of an unending war, or perpetual war in conflict studies.

The concept refers to a lasting state of war with no clear condition or clear period of conflict cessation that would lead to its conclusion. These wars are situations of ongoing tension that may escalate at any moment, similar to the Cold War. The wars can last for a prolonged period of time and often come about when a stalemate occurs between warring sides. Such conflict situations are hard to end with a negotiated peace deal due to the different interests of the two sides and the diverging points of focus of those involved.

The lack of a desire to bring these conflicts to an end often imply that one or both sides are looking at different goals and this lack of congruence in objectives makes it harder to reach a compromise and bring the war to an end. For the most part, a state of perpetual war is promoted by the powerful members of dominant political and economic classes, making a conscious effort to maintain their positions of economic and political superiority, while the proverbial grass bears the brunt of their continuing conflicts.

This is not exactly dissimilar with the current ASUU action. With barely nine months to the end of the current administration and the apparent aloofness of the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari, there is a feeling that ASUU is fighting a losing battle by attempting to force the hand of what is mostly a lame duck administration to accede to their demands. There is no clear visible path towards a resolution of this impasse.

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is currently focused on the electioneering campaigns for the 2023 general election and Buhari’s reactions, or lack thereof, to very grave security and economic issues affecting the country are all indicative of a deep-rooted malaise that will continue to turn a blind eye to the very important issue of education. It is, therefore, obvious that, as is the case with a perpetual war, the two sides of ASUU and the FG neither have a shared sense of the crisis nor are they looking at the progress of academic work through the same lens.

It is a fact that successive governments have underfunded education and it is indisputable that funding and revitalisation of Nigerian public universities, as well as attractive pay for the lecturers, will go a long way in resolving most of the demands of ASUU. And so the Union has every right to seek to force the hand of government to see to it that education improves across the country.

It is also important to arrest the ongoing brain drain, which is responsible for the migration of Nigeria’s best brains, students and lecturers, to countries where education is given the premium place it deserves so as to be certain about their academic pursuits.

Then there is also the sociocultural and civic benefit of a sound education. A proper education is the foundation of progress for every society and the academic system is the seed bed for every developmental step that a people make especially in this jet-paced 21st century.

Without a solid educational foundation, leadership fails to gain and to improve and not only is the current generation stunted in developmental indices, the next generation will have nothing to build on to stay relevant and compete favourably in the comity of nations. The poorly educated will continue to be subservient to the advanced academic competitors. Little wonder those who know this are seeking “greener pastures” for their academic needs.

The Nigerian tertiary education system consistently ranks poorly among universities and post-secondary school institutions worldwide. An analysis of rankings of tertiary institutions among the most influential and well established global rankings, such as the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), provides evidence of the low premium the country places on academic excellence and world-class education delivered by experts at the peak of their careers in diverse fields. Nigerian graduates are no longer highly sought after outside these shores. So, ASUU has a right to demand action to address these issues.

Yet, I must call for an end to the incessant and protracted strike actions. The present Federal Government is not ready to negotiate fairly and will continue to pay lip service to the need to expedite action on resolving the crisis. Besides, given its traditional reluctance to tackle wastage in governance and close loopholes of corruption and theft, it is not cash-strapped to the point of borrowing to run the government. There is little to show that it will accede to ASUU and honestly attend to the demands of the striking lecturers.

This government’s bad policy choices must not be the grounds for ASUU to drag this issue beyond the lifetime of this administration and belabour the next one with a crisis that is not of its making. The lengthy industrial action implies that the students bear the brunt of the lingering strike, with no end in sight. Most of them cannot commit to any long-term projects now because the uncertainty around the resumption of academic activities persists from one month to the other. They are losing time in the most productive stage of their lives and ASUU must not let it continue indefinitely.

If after 16 strikes, since its first strike in 1988, when it protested against the extremities of the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, which led to the banning of the group on August 7, 1988, ASUU still needs to push for their demands with more strikes. We must wake up to the reality that strikes are failing to engender progress as they should today and protracted strikes only serve to make things worse for all concerned.

There is a raging debate about “no work, no pay” further exacerbating an already implosive situation. We should focus more on negotiations so that those who do not have the luxury to attend private universities also have schools to go to and improve their lives.

I advise ASUU to call off the strike and return to the classrooms in good faith, even as negotiations with the government continue. Education must be treated as the essential service that it rightly is. At the resumption of a new government, I will recommend that ASUU gets to sit down with those responsible and make reasonable demands for the resuscitation of the academic system and the overhauling of Nigeria’s tertiary education with measurable milestones to keep track of progress along the way. Clearly, this protracted industrial action is not working and it needs to be brought to an end as quickly as possible so that Nigeria’s traumatised students can return to learning.

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