By Ibrahim Jibia
Levi Obijiofor’s piece on ASUU strike on Tuesday, July 5, 2022, was, as usual, unsparing of the Honorable Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige. For reasons best known to him, the minister has been the whipping boy of his column since he assumed duties in 2015. That’s his style and style, they say, is the man. The saying that a tree that struts the centre of the village square takes the most cuts is right anyway. I cry not for Ngige, hence, but issues can be handled more reasonably. When a columnist who shapes public opinion cashes in on trite deja vous of “government is doing nothing” to bury abiding steps that have been taken for public good, how does he benefit the society? Such perversion can only satisfy a seeming paranoia while the society buffeted by a deluge of lies, couched in canonical submissions, is deprived. The concrete measures, which the Federal Government has taken to reposition university education are not shrouded in bureaucracy. They are in the public domain, therefore, ignoring them only provides satisfaction for hate and mischief.
The first step in dismantling the near-nonsense Levi front-loaded to the back page of The Sun newspaper is to acknowledge that at the root of modern civilization is the rule of law and that Nigeria, just like the United States, where he is hibernating with ‘third hand’ information, is also a country governed by laws, which must be obeyed by all – government, citizens and organisations. We shouldn’t blanch or express disgust only when the government does otherwise. I know that the North Atlantic axis of the hemisphere is quite a distance from home but technology has bridged all that. A search on the Internet would have availed him the elaborate provisions of Section 17 of the Trade Disputes Act, Cap. T8, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, that make it mandatory for unions to call off action once a strike is apprehended by the competent authority, reposed in the Minister of Labour and Employment. Commentariats should be equipped not to misdirect the public. When ASUU declared a dispute with the Ministry of Education and subsequently went on strike on February 14, 2022, the conciliation of February 17 by the Minister of Labour, followed by another on March 1, with exhaustive deliberations and timelines on action points, ASUU ipso facto, came under legal obligation to return to the classroom. It is public how beyond the government, well-meaning Nigerians joined in pleading with ASUU to return to work while talks continued. Even the declaration at the National Labour Advisory Council, immensely respected by the tripartite, which convened on March 6, 2022, in Lagos, urging ASUU to respect the labour laws, fell on stone.
Consider how retrogressive it is for unions to choose strike as the first option in every dispute. Even under the pandemic emergency of COVID-19, resident doctors abandoned dying patients in the hospitals and so did ASUU, who left the classroom for eight months, turning down pleas by government to do virtual teaching, which the time imposed the world over. In the neighbouring state of Ghana, where the economy is also facing downturns like ours, university teachers went on strike for only a week, resumed work while negotiating with government. Not in Nigeria! And this is despite demonstrable good faith by government since the Memorandum of Action of February 2020. In 2021, government released N40b for Earned Allowances and N30b paid for revitalization. Another N22.72 billion mainstreamed into 2021 budget was also paid. In all, N92b was disbursed, apart from sundry funding by TETFUND as well as hundreds of billions in arrears of salaries. Government’s fidelity to this payments in 2022 is the reason ASUU neither agitates for allowances nor makes issues over revitalization anymore. It is a given.
Why then is ASUU on strike? Competence over handling of this matter is not an issue, for Ngige has successfully conciliated 1,683 disputes since 2015. The implications of these cascading disputes in the void of seamless labour administration cannot be lost. Therefore, the answer to the preceding question borders on the inflexible, stubborn disposition of ASUU to negotiations. The re-negotiation of the 2009 agreement and the UTAS payment platform, which are the only issues remaining of the 13-point demand ASUU tabled ab innitio, are work in progress. They are so sensitive and delicate that any misstep will wrought severe national consequences. Earlier in the year, when government replaced the Munzali Committee with Nimi Briggs, ASUU boycotted it for over a month, insisting that the submissions of Munzali, which allegedly recommended over 200% salary increase, was sacrosanct, despite advisory by the Minister of Finance it was beyond the national treasury. As well, the ILO Principle on Rights at Work is elaborate on Ability to Pay as basic element of Collective Bargaining. Not minding the runaway prices of goods and services , the New National Minimum Wage with its Consequential Adjustment subsequently has just been effected. Workers in the education sector and academics in teaching hospitals take over a quarter of the national wage bill. Therefore, further salary increase ought to be done in a manner that doesn’t trigger disruptive disequilibrium in the national salary structure. That the 2009 agreement is still an issue is because the previous PDP government entered into an agreement it couldn’t implement. But even at that, Munzali’s was only a report waiting for streamlining by the Education Minister, with inputs from the Presidential Committee on Salaries and Wages before transmission to higher authority. Ironically, ASUU leaders who used to break the fast with the Education Minister during the last Ramadan forgot that the Munzali report was gathering dust until his exit as the chairman of the committee of pro-chancellors, thus the expiry of his mandate and report. Who takes the blame ? Ngige as usual. Bottomline is that, after the initial spanner in the works by ASUU, the Nimi Briggs committee has made its submission with the input of the monitoring committee set up by the Minister of Labour and now awaits action by the President.
What then is the matter with UTAS, a payment platform ASUU developed as an alternative to IPPIS? It failed the critical integrity and vulnerability tests, which NITDA insists it must score 100%. ASUU nonetheless wants Ngige to decree it into use. Of course the rivalry in the academic community led the non-teaching staff in SSANU and NASU comes up with their own alternative in UPPPS. Which one should the government take? Confusion! Who should be blamed? Ngige as usual. Anyway, government has directed that all, together with IPPIS, go back to NITDA for testing and Ngige has set up another committee to fast-track the process. Should ASUU not call off strike while this is sorted out? Levi, please, answer.
You are correct, Nigerians are tired of the annual ritual of strike. That is why ASUU has lost the support of the people, the reason also the affiliate unions are opting out.
The medical lecturers, under the aegis of Medical and Dental Consultants Association (MDCAN) in some universities like Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto, University of Maiduguri and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi have long dissociated themselves from the ruinous strike and currently demanding for the payment of their salaries. Recall too that some state universities have long left ASUU. Many academics according to reports in the dailies have confided in officials in the presidency they were tired of strike and ready to return to classroom if government would make little adjustment in their salaries. Reckon with the position of Dr. Emmanuel Ojukwu, the Public Relations Officer of Nnamdi Azikiwe University in his verified Facebook account. “ASUU should end this strike and recall students to school. Whatever is remaining should be sorted out when school is session.”
Lest we forget, a less thoughtful Minister of Labour would have invoked section 9 and 14 of the Trade Disputes Act to transmit this matter to the National Arbitration Panel or to the National Industrial Court. Precedents had forced unions with such matter back to work but the issue of retrieving our higher education from doldrums deserves deeper attention. In deed, a rival anti-strike, factional Congress of University Academics (CONUA) had announced itself in 2019 , in fact, met officials of the Ministry of Labour for registration and equally expressed support for IPPIS. You can now see why your accusation of negligence by senior official of government such as “the Minister of Labour , even the president” is wrong. I hope you take this correction so as to pass it along to your readers subsequently. Let me ignore the demeaning words with which you have repeatedly been describing the Hon. Minister in your column. But note that impudence is not an accompanying right to ownership of a column, neither does it grant a ticket to verbal pillory.