Deaf and dumb
• Why talks with govt failed – ASUU president
From GABRIEL DIKE, Osogbo
Saturday, August 8, 2009
•Prof Awuzie
The National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Professor Ukachukwu Awuzie, has rejected the Federal Government road map to the revival of the educational sector. He called it a foreign idea imposed on the country, which would not achieve any result.
Awuzie said the first step to solving the concerns in the sector was the convocation of an education summit, where solutions would be proffered to the myriad of problems confronting the sector. He also, spoke on various issues bedeviling the educational sector.
The professor said vice chancellors of universities have been turned to errand boys by National Universities Commission (NUC), adding that the ASUU wrote 35 letters to the Federal Government before the on-going strike started.
Excerpts:
A lot has been said about the state of the educational sector. How could the sector be revived from total collapse?
Captured holistically, what we require to prevent the educational sector from total collapse is an immediate summoning of an education summit. The summit I am talking about is not what the Senate said they have done. Not even the so-called road map. This one will bring people together. It should be a Nigerian programme. The summit I am talking about will look at where the funding is going to come; get an agenda that would be supported by World and IMF.
The summit must be funded from inside, if you look at our educational sector, for many years now, you will observe diarrhoea of policies. When there is a problem government abandons it to face another one. Education in Nigeria needs a holistic reassessment and revaluation and that can be done through an education summit. The summit will help us to place our priorities right and decide where we are going. Any nation that cannot invest in education cannot talk about becoming an industrial nation; so if you look at nations, like Japan, South Africa and even Ghana, you see the amount of money they budget for education.
Until we have that summit, which will involve all stakeholders the educational sector will continue to have problems. When we hold the summit we will see the results. Do you know that when some states got money for UBE, the don’t bring the counterpart funding? They will even embezzle the one that is sent to them. They will not even use it for education. You won’t believe it that up till today our children are still studying under the trees, in dilapidated structures and the loss self-confidence.
But check out the private schools.
What they do first is to build a nice structure and create a good environment; when parents come there they see it as a serious business. But go to our public schools; they are in dire need of financial intervention and it is not a question of funding but making use of the money budgeted judiciously. All the summit, all leakages in the system would be addressed; all sources of funding will be explored. What ASUU has tried to do in the several negotiations is to see whether we can have a handle at the university; if we can lift it up. The answer is in the holistic approach not segmented approach to the problems.
Government has always said it cannot provide free education at all levels. Do you agree with this position?
I don’t agree with the Federal Government. We have the resources. Let me tell you. Chief C. Okonge, in his book, “Reconstructing the Nigerian University System,” has said that we can double the intake in all our institutions with little or no additional funding, only if we are creative and using the little funds available. He backed it with an argument that 3XY is the same as 3x multiple by Y or YY multiple by X. We can use the same facilities we have but we have to reprogramme our academic calendars. He said that this can be done without additional funding. However, the problem is mismanagement and fraud. We heard how billions are stolen; the amount of money put into private pockets. If we block all these holes we shall have enough money; it is a matter of priority and proper planning, and we can give our people free and qualitative education.
What do you think about the World Bank and IMF position on commercialisation of education in Third World countries?
This is were we have problem. No nation that is trying to develop will get the World Bank and IMF to tell them how they are going to move forward. Sometime ago they said that we didn’t need research; that all the researches had been done in developed nations. They said all we needed to do was domesticate them and that we don’t even need to do our research. That is the worse advice your enemy can give to you. So when we want to develop, we don’t have to predicate it on our development process but on the World Bank and IMF model. It must be indigenous.
We must evolve it. How did strong economic nations develop? They didn’t have to learn from the World Bank and IMF. When they came here sometimes ago with what they called NICP, we opposed and challenged it and they later confessed that it was not workable here. All the noise about World Bank programme cannot give us education or development.
Is ASUU satisfied with the implementation of the University Autonomy Act by the various governing councils?
It is something that came like freedom. People did not fight for it, and they don’t know the value. Some of the people who are chairmen of governing council of universities don’t know what ASUU went through to get the 2003 Act (university autonomy). In fact, after the signing of the Act, you know it disappeared. It was hidden because they said it was ASUU’s version of university autonomy. When we challenged government, they didn’t it was gazetted in 2007; something that was signed into law in 2003. So you understand that those who are in charge of affairs don’t know how we struggled to get it. They are making one or two mistakes in implementing.
Only a few universities did that. They may have problem as a result of the calibre of people appointed council chairmen. Such a person must be of integrity and have a vision and must withstand pressure. The governing council chairmen were sent there to represent Mr. President, the visitor to federal universities and you know what Mr. President will do if he were in that circumstance. When he goes for something, he goes out for the best (VC); so why must his representative begin to talk about clan, tribe and state in the selection of VC? In fact, the university is a concept; it is of universal application. In most of the first generation universities, the early VCs and registrars were white men, from the University of Michigan, who became VCs. In those days, the council looked for the best; it also searched for the best materials, no matter where the people come from.
We hope that chairmen of councils will follow the letters of the 2003 Act. Some of those who are implementing it didn’t know what we went through to get that law and therefore, they got it on a platter of gold and therefore think they can play around with it. However, we shall resist it; it was a product of a very strong struggle. We shall not allow anyone to mess it up.
Selection of VC has always generated ripples in the university system. How can this tension be reduced or eliminated completely during the exercise?
There are about two or three ways of doing that. One, a person who should be appointed Vice Chancellor should be a man of honour and integrity, who stands for what the university is. Tension arises from the fact that when some people are appointed VC, they do not follow due process in the university; they think it is time for them to bring their kith and kin. When they are doing all these things, others are watching, and feel like revolting. Some of them revolt; they may not be able to express it. Some VCs run the university in arbitrary way as if they are dictators and oppress others. They disregard rule of law and due process.
They build walls around themselves. When some of these things happen, some people within the system will say their persons would get there when a VC from their place is in place. But if we have a VC who believes he has come to serve, he would look for the best hands.
There is also problem because government said VCs are political appointees. They have given them large wage structure, far in excess of what is available in the system, where the disparity between them as VCs and the professors of their cadre, is unbelievably high; thus the struggle of who become the VC becomes a do-or-die and those who are desperate will employ and explore every means available, including primordial considerations in order to get the job. That is also source of crisis in the university. So if we remove all these, we need to look for people known to be above primordial considerations as VCs, I think some of these hue and cry about who will become a VC will be out of it. So, those appointed have roles to play and those appointing them also have roles to play. Those in council must really go out for the best.
When they set up the criteria, it should not be one that has hidden agenda or made to favour a particular individual, clan or. It is only when we begin to get VCs from outside the states to compete with those within that the best would be selected. If I am in the university in the West and I want to import my village people, unless these people perform excellently well and beat any other person, I cannot force them on the university. But when we localise it and begin to enforce it, then some of these measures and tendencies would start to manifest.
Recently, the Supreme Court gave judgment in favour of some sacked lecturers at UNILORIN. How did ASUU receive the news and what was it like during the eight years of the struggle?
We are not yet out of the woods, only five (officials) out of the 49 sacked lecturers were reinstated; we still have 44 others, whose case are still pending at the Supreme Court. We are optimistic that at the end of the day and by God’s grace, the final judgment on the 44 others will be out. It is by then that we shall celebrate. However, the union received it with joy. It is pleasing that our colleagues have been vindicated and that also the union has been vindicated.
We have been saying that our members were not given fair trial, fair hearing and that due process was not followed in the termination of their appointments. And so the justices of the Supreme Court ruled that they were not given fair hearing. It was a thing of joy for the union and all lovers of justice and due process. However, it was also a day of grief, when we look back and found out that the case is clearly man’s inhumanity to man, subjecting their colleagues to eight years of hardship, not only them but their families and relations. It was eight years in which their services were denied people of Nigeria, humanity, students of UNILORIN and the university administration. It was eight years of hardship, suffering and misery. it was eight years in which we lost three senior academic staff in that university. So, it is also a period of grief for us.
As we rejoice over the victory, we mourn because of the hardship and because we believe that if this nation were to progress, if the visitor (Obasanjo) to federal universities had acted as the visitor, these people would have been recalled.
Another strike is on, with the universities paralyzed. Why is ASUU in for a fresh showdown with the Federal Government?
ASUU went into negotiation with the Federal Government. I want you to understand our level of patience. We had an agreement signed in 2001 that was due for renegotiation in 2004; it took ASUU 35 letters to government and relevant agencies of government for them to agree to reconstitute the negotiating team. Then in 2006, we started negotiation and that discussion lasted two years. What happened is that the chairman of government negotiating team, who is also the leader of the team, the highly respected Deacon Gammaliel Onosode, insisted that every issue that would be put down must be backed with some empirical evidence and that he was not going to agree to anything that would lead to crisis in the university system.
He wanted to see that the brain drain was reversed and that it is the beginning of rehabilitation of our infrastructure and making our universities universally and international competitive. He wants to ensure that if money was provided, there was an assurance that it would be prudently and judiciously used. So, instead of them trying to look at the demands of ASUU, we had to call all the federal universities in Nigeria to send in their 10 years rolling plans for developing their universities. We had to develop the data base, look at what happens in other Africa universities, particularly those areas where our colleagues are migrating.
We want to create a competitive environment whereby even those in Europe would come to contribute, not because, they are going to get higher package but they would be comfortable. Based on that, we went to work and it took two years to take every line negotiated and agreed upon and at the end we had an agreement, which we sent to our principals as far back as January 28, 2009. When negotiation came to the conditions of service, he (Onosode) said it was important and demanded it be sent to government. We sent a letter in 2007 to Mr. President through the Minister of Education, informing him of the proposal for the conditions of service for staff, which we got through our study of salaries and allowances in some African universities where our colleagues migrate and even in Nigeria where they go for employment.
By the time we sent the proposal, the price of oil was about $41 per barrel. What we are earning toady from oil is higher than what it was when we did the negotiation. At the time of negotiation, oil was selling around $40 to $42 per barrel. Today, it is above $65. It is even worse that in this year’s budget, education was allocated 1.171 per cent of the national budget and this is a country that is aiming to be one of the 20 developed economies in the world by 2020. How do we get there without educating our people?
We finished the negotiation and sent to them. It stayed six months and government didn’t see the urgency of signing the agreement. They did not tell ASUU anything or why they couldn’t sign and in fact, they invited us. We came down to Abuja, but we were told that there were problems and that they won’t sign. So we left. What we are saying is that ASUU is not convinced that government wants to restore education to its lost glory, particularly the universities. It is easy for Nigerians to say ASUU should find alternative means of getting government to accede to its demands. Let me state clearly, as the President of ASUU, that we know perhaps, two means of seeking our demands. We have used them for two years and six months; so any person who wants an alternative or makes suggestion should not include lobbying and dialogue because we have done them for two and half years. The only one left for us, which we do painfully, is the strike. When we considered that the discussion had become a dialogue between the deaf and the dumb, where there was no more communication, as nothing was being achieved, we could not help but bear our fangs. That is when strike comes in. When ASUU decide to go on strike, we do it very painfully and anybody who says we should go on with dialogue should realise that the Second World War did not get two years of dialogue before an agreement was reached.
Parents see the introduction of post-UME as money making venture for the universities. Do you subscribe to such assertion?
ASUU has insisted that the post-UME is an illegal act because if you look at the legal framework that gave JAMB the permission to conduct university exams, only JAMB can conduct examinations for admission into tertiary institutions. So, that is why they call it screening exercise, not examination and if it is screening, we don’t think that the students can be subjected to another examination until we amend the Act establishing JAMB. But we also know that the right to admit rests with the Senate of each university; so JAMB acts as examining body, presents applicants and from there, the candidates go to the universities and the universities would say this is our requirements for admission. It is money making venture for some universities, when the amount charged is too high. With the poor funding, if the universities are going to conduct some screening, it is going to cost them money, in terms of time; people are going to be supervisor; staffers will do their work outside the normal call of duties; the university would use some materials, including the computers to produce the questions.
This involves money. If the universities are properly funded, the exercise could have been less. I think the NUC and JAMB are trying to put pressure on universities to charge minimally for services that are going to be rendered for this examination. So in summary, what I said is that, as a union we think it is not right to even conduct any exam because the Minimum Standard Act and the JAMB Act gave JAMB the sole right to conduct examinations for admission into the universities.
We, as ASUU, have recommended the amendment of the two Acts because we have also seen the advantage, where candidates go to miracle centres to get the highest score in UME and when these candidates are put to proper examination, they can’t write anything. So that second check (post-UME) is also necessary; some people get highest score for a course in Architecture but he/she doesn’t have flair for drawing and you admit such students because of the score, they will never make it in Architecture. So when the institutions conduct the post-UME and match it with the candidates’ performance, they will get the best. The post-UME has its own merit, but it must be such that the law that gave JAMB the sole authority must be amended.
