ASUU-FG’s lingering rift: A stain on national integrity

By Kaanti Ernen

There have been heaps of submissions from concerned quarters about the perennial face-off between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government of Nigeria with some puckets of calls to nip the disputation in the bud and as a concerned patroit, l feel so uneasy keeping mute while my chest aches with my view hence this typographic outing as an added voice.

Permit me to postulate here that the recurring blue flu by ASUU and the speed with which the duo are handling it is capable of complicating the Nigeria destiny. Education as a sector is the bedrock upon which all other sectors lie and wake up to function properly the next day and it will be amazingly fool hardy to think we should rather pay the collateral damages that will surely come with its negligence rather than aptly embracing it and giving it the tender care it deserves even if it is spiky and both ASUU and the Federal government of Nigeria must have known this.

It was Victor Hugo who argued that,  “he who opens a school door, closes a prison.” We can also agree without reservation that the purpose of education was never to generate as many people who are trained for new jobs as possible, but rather to spawn more individuals who will have the potency to think for themselves and seek the truth, which will further result in improvement, both in their individual lives and the country’s entire political lanscape. With this born in mind, it is clearly safe to say that education should not be miscontrued as a process of meeting a set of imperatives at school, but rather as a process that, regardless of our grade achievement, helps us fully understand our inherited world house in which we must live and work.

Out of my tight schedules, I was however able to painstakingly go down memory lane and could recall that the President Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government hung its megaphone and sounded clearly that it was going to run a government that would be very hostile to corruption which suggested in every parlance that any form of intransparency was also going to be considered an unbearable and uncondonable  antagonism.

I am sure that many people like myself are currently sitting on the spectator’s gallery, watching with keen interest, how the Federal Government-ASUU drama is disturbingly playing out at the peril of the very future of our own children, who are already justifiably feeling disinherited, humiliated and disrespected even with the mockery oriented and ridiculous nickname of “leaders of tomorrow”.

While l struggle with the accuracy to predict how the vicious drama will end, I am uncasually thrown into the state of apprehension and utter disillusionment by the purported story line. ASUU wants the federal government for what it called funding for revitalisation of tertiary institutions which dates back to the 2009 and 2013
agreements. The Federal Government agreed to inject a total of N1.3 trillion into public universities, both state and federal, in six tranches, starting from 2013, after the union decried the deplorable state of the institutions.

It was repirted that in 2013, the government was to release N200 billion, and for the five subsequent years, government was to release N220 billion each year.

After releasing the first tranche, the government stopped releasing the funds. In 2017, the government released N20 billion. In 2020, it promised to release N25 billion.
ASUU rejected the offer, insisting on N110 billion, which is 50 percent of a tranche of N220 billion that it had demanded, but the government declined, citing paucity of funds.

The Federal Government had also asked ASUU to suggest other sources of funding. The union recommended value added tax and stamp duty, but decried that the government activated these sources and abandoned its agreement.

Payment of outstanding earned academic allowances (EAA) was also among the demands. In 2009, the Federal Government agreed to pay lecturers EAA, but the issue has lingered for years over the failure to implement it. The government finally agreed to pay the first tranche of the backlog of allowances in November 2019 and the second instalment by
August 2020. It was however reported that nothing was paid.

The union also demanded _mainstreaming payments of EAA into the annual budgets, beginning from the 2019 budget. In 2020, the Federal Government agreed to pay N40 billion. At a time, the government came out said it had released N22.127 billion earned allowances of both academic and non-academic workers of universities to 38 universities.

On the conditions of service,  the union demanded separate salary structure for university lectures to be known as ‘Consolidated University Academic Salary Structure’. It were rife reports that over thirteen years later, the government inaugurated a seven-man committee, but ASUU has since refused to recognise the committee.

On the NUC 2004 Act, ASUU called for a review to tackle the proliferation of universities in the country.  As reports had it, the union decried that the proliferation has become almost the order of the day as it appears that both federal and state governments have
turned universities to constituency projects. This, it argued, has been turning universities into mere upgraded secondary schools therefore downsizing standards that universities should be known for.

The union also demanded 26 percent of Nigeria’s annual budget alloted to education, and half of that allocation to universities and that the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) be implemented.

The introduction of the IPPIS, ASUU has been greeted with desdain by ASUU for many reasons. Such as the inability of lecturers with payment issues to resolve it within the school incurring them added expenses to travel to Abuja, in ability to know their salaries and unjustified deductions.

Saying IPPIS would make university operations difficult and inefficient, adding that universities operate a flexible payroll system to ensure flexible recruitment of lectures, to attract scholars from across the world, among others hence its introduction of ‘UTAS,’ which was said to have passed the integrity test by the Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

However, the union confirmed that certain issues like salary shortfall among few others have been addressed by the Federal Government, yet the implementation of UTAS, IPPIS and the release of the backlog of salaries since the effectiveness of the strike in February this year have been making the difference between the two actors to last.

According to a recent statement credited to the minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, in some of the national dailies concerning the ruination, he said in his wisdom that, “if the students are determined to getcompensated, they should take ASUU and other striking unions to court and claim for damages incurred over the strike period.

“Who do you assume will compensate the students? The federal government? No. Probably you should take the leaders of striking unions to court to pay them. Yes. Probably the court will award damages and then we’ll
see how they pay,” he said.

But l think if we as leaders in a “great nation” poised with passion and vigour to attain loftier hights as we claim, find any pleasure  in proposing juvenile debates such as this and at times like this then it is reminiscent of a proverbial fool who was chasing rat with his edifice aflame.

Adamu hinted that ASUU proceeded with the strike despite the Buhari regime and agencies such as TETFUND and UBEC directly investing N2.5tn into education.

The minister, however, noted that renegotiations are ongoing among ASUU members to determine when to call off the strike.

“Unions in Tertiary Institutions in the country, especially the Academic Staff Union of Universities have been
engaged recurring strikes that have crippled the university education system at the expense of the children inspite of the huge investments of over N2.5tn in tertiary institutions in the last ten years from TETFUND alone.

A man found worthy to be a minister in a reputable regime as this cannot lie but a careful reader or listener to the above  statement credited to the Education Minister may be inquisitive and ask, ” So the government knows that it  has been scratching the university system where it is not itching or is it that federal government has been  pouring all these monies to the universities without ensuring they duely utilized or better still,  are the university lecturers now too greedy and gluttonous and all this at the disadvantage of the children?”

The minister also disclosed that although the ASUU-proposed University Transparency Accountability
Solution and University Peculiar Personnel and Payroll System out-performed the government-backed Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System in the efficiency tests conducted, the FG has not approved UTAS as claimed in some quarters. Consequently, he said the FG would integrate ASUU’s peculiarities in any of the platforms eventually adopted. This includes updating IPPIS to now accommodate payment of lecturers on sabbatical.

The disturbing question now is if Adamu Adamu has come out to confess that the  UTAS outperformed the Integrated Payroll Information System (IPPIS) as what appears to be very complimentary to the present government’s stance on the pursuit of accountability and transparency, why procrastinate in the stead of jumping up and embracing it with enthusiasm?

Any body can hold his or her own opinion about what is transpiring between the two parties but as for me, l think the Nigerian government using public universities the same whip it used on public primary and secondary schools in the country that gave them severe bruises that sent them gasping for life.

Like John Maxwell once rightly said, power really is a test of character. In the hands of person of integrity, it is of tremendous benefit; in the hands of a tyrant, it causeses terrible destruction and I wish Mr. President through the Education minister casts himself in the role of the former. Integrity they say is the greatest jewellery of a man. In  the words of William Shakespare, “he that steals my purse steals trash but he who filches my good name away from me”. Mr. President who has a wide tentacle to witty sayings may remember this and be careful not to go home with a crate of rotten eggs.

Kaanti Ernen was born in 1988 to the family of Kaanti Tyokever in Mbavuur, Gambe Tiev, Logo LGA, Benue State. He holds diploma in mass communication at the Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo. He also holds Bachelors Degree in Arts in mass communication from the prestigious University of Nigrria Nsukka. He is a prolific writer of opinion articles, fiction and nonfiction books. He is the author of ‘Sour Taste in Neighbourhood’ — fiction and core  author of ‘Benue Our Pride’ — non-fiction. (Presently in Press).