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The university system and, indeed, Nigeria’s educational system would receive a boost from the proceeds of the battle that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has waged against seeming indifference of the government to raise the status of public universities to the ivory towers they ought to be. A negotiation process that began in 2009 made progress in fits and starts because the government hardly could muster the resources to turn agreements from mere paperwork to visible projects where students do not have to crowd around lecture halls where the a lecturer probably was not aided by even a megaphone, as a friend who teaches a class of over 600 students once lamented over his helplessness in the matter, and how he was forced to do computer-based tests even when the ideal thing to examine students’ logicality and reasoning would have been to have them write essays. He would mark such scripts in perpetuity and thus miss necessary timelines. The CBT became the inevitable option. Such moves are bound to reduce the quality of education which is one of the reasons ASUU went up in arms with the government.
Six months after, the government is reported to have acceded to virtually all the demands of ASUU, which include to conclude the renegotiating the 2009 agreement, deploy the University Transparency and Accountability System (UTAS), pay outstanding arrears of Earned Academic Allowances (EEA), release agreed sum of money for revitalization of public universities, address proliferation and governance issues in state universities, settle promotion arrears, release withheld salaries of academics, and pay outstanding third party deductions. These led to the current strike. Government may have acceded to all the demands, although the details have not been made public. In a meeting last Tuesday, ASUU and government seemed to have resolved all issues but one. Reports stated that ASUU’s insistence on payment of the backlog of its members’ salary was the reason the strike was prolonged. The minister of education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who spoke for the government, said President Muhammadu Buhari flatly rejected the payment of salary backlog.
According to Adamu, “All contentious issues between the government and ASUU had been settled except for quest for members’ salaries for the period of strike to be paid, a demand the President has ‘flatly rejected’. He advised the union to see the no-work-no-pay stance of govermnt as its members’ compensation to the students for the period the students had stayed at home. He also said the students were free to take ASUU to court to claim damages. The students have taken up the suggestion as stated by the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) though they would join government in the suit.
The minister’s suggestion has largely swept the blame for the strike to the doorstep of the union. Such an assertion presupposes that the union walked away from the classroom for no reason. That would throw overboard the glaring warning strike and verbal warning that preceded the strike. It amounts to unjustifiable incitement from government to urge the students to seek redress in court against the union in a manner that absolves the government of complicity in the matter. The students did not buy into that incitement. They have noted that, if they seek redress on the matter, they would join the government in whatever suit they would file. The strike has put their education in jeopardy.
The foregoing being noted, the matter has come to a head, given that the President’s refusal to agree to the union’s demand that its members be paid for the months of strike because such payment violates the Trade Disputes Act. It would, indeed, be compassionate if the President reconsiders his stance and concedes to the payment, but he would have broken the law, a situation that puts him in bad light. It would present that irony of a leader who willfully violates the law of the land more so when he has tried to meet the union’s demands more than half way. The grapevine says that government’s negotiating team recommended monthly pay of a figure that slightly exceeded N1 million a month for a professor, the government said it could not pay that figure but agreed to pay something higher than the previous pay. The concession was made across board for all categories of lecturers. The union reportedly expressed willingness to take the offer except for the knot of salary during strike. President Buhari could pay but he is under no obligation to do so. Section 43 of the Trade Disputes Act is unequivocal in insisting that striking workers are not entitled to their habitual remunerations for the period that they cease to work. Some people hold that if ASUU members get paid every time they go on strike, as they used to be, the spirit of self-denial that strikes are supposed to symbolize is defeated. Strikes then become no more than what Farook A. Kperogi describes as “a lazy exploitative temporary inconvenience for a deferred gratification.”
The union’s president says the no-work-no-pay law should not apply to his members because they are not like doctors whose strike could result in the irreversible loss of lives. ASUU leader, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, says his members could cover lost ground by teaching backward. That process cannot retract time. I understand that the backlog he refers to is so enormous that students who ought to be in year three have not completed year one, a situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown aided by the strike. Even if they make up for lost lectures, the emotional trauma the students were put through cannot be reversed. Again, it would imply that the union’s members made no sacrifice in the struggle. The government is under no legal obligation to pay for work not done, but my take is that President Buhari should concede to pay for some months, perhaps three months, to show the union that he means well for tertiary education in the land. I understand the union is scheduled to meet on Monday. It should call off the strike, and apply moral suasion on its pay-for-strike demand. The tide of public opinion is turning against it, and the solution to stem it is to return to work.
