Over the years, the standard of education in Nigeria is said to have nosedived owing to the alleged lack of commitment on the part of government. This has also led to the unending perennial battle between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities at the higher level. In this interview with JULIANA UCHE-OKOBI, ASUU President, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, speaks on the FG/ASUU logjam, the ailing education sector and other sundry issues. Excerpts:
For years now, the standard of education in Nigeria has been declining. What do you think is wrong with the sector?
There are two schools of thought on the issue of “fallen standard” of education in Nigeria. The first school of thought believes that the standard has fallen, pointing to the poor quality of school leavers and other products of our educational institutions. The second school, however, argues that it is not the “standard” that has fallen but official support for the Nigerian education system that has waned. I belong to the second school of thought. This is because specifications for what we need for qualitative education and good quality products from the system are clearly known. These are well remunerated and highly motivated human resources, sound curricula, adequate teaching and learning materials, standard school plants, effective management, and other basic ingredients of a qualitative education. In elite public and private schools in Nigeria today, these critical inputs of a productive education system are present. But where they are mostly lacking are the rural and urban ghetto schools, where you are likely to find more than 90 per cent of the children of 70 per cent poor Nigerians. In fact, some of the urban elite schools proudly advertise that they run curricula of schools in Europe and America to prove the point of their global competitiveness. So, for me, it can safely be concluded that the educational standard, which is the ideal, is there in principle but government’s lackadaisical attitude to supporting the education of the poor has made it unattainable in Nigeria.
Before now, education in Nigeria was held in high esteem; graduates were respected, foreigners came to Nigeria to study and teach. What did our leaders do then that they are not doing today?
Again, it’s a question of priorities. From the late 1950s up to the early 1970s, education in Nigeria was accorded its pride of place in the scheme of things by the then leaders. For instance, the early nationalists like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe and Sir Ahmadu Bello saw education as the most potent tool for nation building and national development. As a matter of fact, some of them were devoting as much as 30 to 40 per cent of their governments’ annual budgets to education. Such prioritization culminated in turning Nigeria into the hub of education in Africa. And up to the late 1970s, South Africans, Ghanaians and other nationals from Africa, Europe and America were found in large numbers teaching and studying in our first generation universities like the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. It is sad that Nigerian children and youths now troop to Ghana, Egypt, South Africa, Sudan, Republic of Benin and other African countries in search of qualitative university education or what is euphemistically called “education tourism.” This is happening because there is no political will to address the rot and decay that have steadily characterised Nigeria’s education system as from the 1980s.
ASUU and the Federal Government have been in a running battle over agreements and unfulfilled promises. Why has government continuously reneged on its promises and what have ASUU’s strikes achieved?
The history of ASUU’s engagements with governments in Nigeria has its roots in the need to arrest the dwindling fortunes of university education. ASUU became a trade union in 1978. This was around the time the military regime started to cut allocation to education and play down the princely position hitherto enjoyed by education in Federal and state budgets. The first generation of ASUU leaders, who transformed it from the National Association of University Teachers (NAUT), which started in 1965, then took up the challenge of struggling for the restoration of universities to what they were in the early years of Nigeria’s political independence. The struggle culminated in the first-ever negotiation with the Shehu Shagari government in 1982. ASUU has subsequently had five other regimes of negotiation/renegotiation, resulting in agreements with the Nigerian governments; the most recent being the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement. Unfortunately, government did not yield to ASUU’s demands, which translated to these agreements until there were some avoidable strike actions on the part of the union. Four critical issues often covered in most of our negotiations/agreements are: funding, conditions of service, university autonomy and academic freedom, and other matters (e.g. laws and policies that support the creation of an enabling environment for universities to deliver on their tripod mandate of teaching, research and community service). The first, and perhaps the most important gain of ASUU struggles to date is that the Union has kept matters concerning university education on the front burners as from the late 1970s. Honest and sincere stakeholders in the system, particularly vice-chancellors and pro-chancellors, publicly agree that, if not for ASUU, the Nigerian University System (NUS) would have gone into total ruins. They admit that ASUU’s efforts in agitating for increased funding and revitalisation of the system, which often yield some dividends, have kept the system afloat. A practical illustration of this was the establishment of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) based on ASUU’s proposal during the 1992 FGN-ASUU negotiation exercise. TETFund has since become a funding model of education intervention for some other African countries like Ghana. Apart from attracting funds to the university system, ASUU has also made some modest gains in addressing the reward system for university academics. The Union has consistently called for parity of esteem with their colleagues and contemporaries in leading African universities, if not in Europe and America. Although Nigerian governments are always reluctant to come to terms with this inevitable reality, our union believes that is the lasting antidote to “brain drain,” which rabidly afflicted our universities in the 1980s and 1990s, when lecturers were quitting their jobs in droves for better offers in the private sector as well as in universities abroad. The third area of gains for ASUU struggles is in creating platforms and networks for engagement against unjust and inhuman conditions within and outside the university system. Our union believes that it is only when scholars are free from the encumbrances of suffocating policies that academic freedom, university autonomy and creativity can thrive. For example, the military did much to harass and intimidate scholars in late 1980s and 1990s; at some point, accusing them of “teaching what they are not employed to teach.” Apart from taking steps to erase military hang-overs from our campuses, ASUU also is taking steps to cause the review of the laws of regulatory agencies like the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). We’re not fully there, but we shall continue with the struggle for the Committee System to thrive and universities to be governed according to their laws and not hijacked by overzealous, odious and invidious vice-chancellors and pro-chancellors.
Nigerian universities have consistently ranked low in Africa. How concerned is ASUU about this and what effort is it making to improve the status quo?
As I said earlier, what is missing are ingredients for quality university education that can empower Nigerian universities to compete globally. This is due to lack of interest in public education by the Nigerian ruling class. For instance, we caused government to undertake the needs assessment of public universities (federal and state) in 2012. The Federal Government then suddenly developed cold feet, when it came to implementing the report which put the estimated cost of addressing the rot and decay in the visited public universities at N1.3 Trillion. ASUU was then forced to embark on a strike action to make FGN implement the report of its own committee in 2013! Consequently, the Federal Government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ASUU, where it promised to release the N1.3 Trillion revitalisation fund in six tranches beginning with N200 Billion. However, that MoU has been observed only in the breach. Apart from the N200billion released for 2013, only N20billion was again released to the universities after much agitations and pressures on the part of ASUU in 2019. We believe the Nigerian University System would have been significantly transformed if government had kept faith with the MoU of 2013 which was empirically generated. ASUU is of the strong view that what Nigerian public universities require to stand the test of meaningful ranking is radical overhauling, which the report of the Needs Assessment of Nigerian Public Universities was meant to achieve. For example, one of the critical elements of the ranking process is the diversity of students and academics in a university. The question now is: how many universities in Nigeria today can confidently attract foreign students and scholars?
After about three months, ASUU called off its strike last year. On what terms did you end the strike?
The last strike action of ASUU was informed by government’s inaction on our demands for (1) revitalisation fund as agreed in the 2013 MoU, (2) non-release of the operational licence of the Nigerian University Pension Management Company (NUPEMCO); (3) release of forensic audit and payment of the outstanding balance of the Earned Academic Allowances (EAA); (4) checking the proliferation of universities and meddling in university operations by state governors; (5) payment of salary shortfalls;Â (6) payment of EAA to loyal ASUU members at UNILORIN; (7) setting up and inauguration of visitation panels to all federal universities; and (8) renegotiation of the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement. We ended the strike when government partially met some of our demands in consideration of appeals by our students and their parents as well as other patriotic Nigerians. However, we signed another Memorandum of Action (MoA) to track the fulfilment of agreements reached with the government.
Have the terms been met by the government?
Before we suspended the strike, the operational licence of NUPEMCO was released. Also the issue of salary shortfalls was addressed and N20billion was released to show commitment to the reactivation of the MoU on the revitalisation fund. Just last week, government made a part-payment on the EAA, but we have no evidence that payment of the outstanding balance has been mainstreamed into the 2019 budget as agreed in the February 7, 2019 MoA. Government has also not inaugurated the visitation panels, and there are still pending issues about the process of renegotiating the 2009 Agreement. Although a Committee on State Universities has been established, getting state governors to identify with it still remains a major issue. Again, ASUU is still pressing and pushing on all these and other outstanding issues.
Can there be other ways of resolving ASUU/Federal Government impasse than strike?
As they say, it takes two to tango. If only governments could be more responsively and reasonably engaging, strike actions would become a thing of the past. But the tragedy is that governments hardly do. We always adopt strike as an option of the last resort. In other words, ASUU only goes on strike when all other possible options like lobbying, writing letters, addressing press conferences, and meeting with critical interest groups would have been exhausted by leadership to no avail. So, we think the only viable alternative to strike is for concerned stakeholders to turn to government whenever the alarm bells are sounded. But experience has taught us in ASUU that, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
On TETFUNDS’ foreign scholarships for Nigerian lecturers, what impact has the policy had on standards in universities?
TETFund’s foreign and local training programmes for university lecturers were designed to develop the teaching and research competencies of junior scholars so that they could, in turn, add value to the Nigerian University System. This is especially with respect to obtaining their masters and doctorate degrees. Many of our colleagues trained overseas have returned to the system in line with the goal of the training programme. However, some who came back had to leave because they could not readily apply the skills and knowledge gained overseas in local universities for lack of requisite facilities and equipment. Knowing the prevailing situation back at home, some others did not bother to return at all. The challenge this throws at us is the need to fix our universities in order to have maximum value for the scarce resources invested on these scholars. ASUU and TETFund have also discussed the option of split-sites training in which part of the fund that could have been wholly spent abroad are invested in Nigerian universities that would collaboratively train the trainees with overseas institutions.
What do you expect from the incoming Minister of Education?
ASUU expects the incoming minister of education to build on the legacy of engagement by Mallam Adamu Adamu. Even when we disagreed with Mallam Adamu, he saw our point and took steps to address our fears to the best of his ability. The minister is inheriting a number of issues relating to the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement, 2013 MoU and 2019 MoA. He needs to hit the ground running on all of these in order to improve on the fragile industrial atmosphere on university campuses. Overall, we expect the new minister to facilitate a general rethink of the place of education in our developmental aspirations.
Do you think education will ever get the needed attention in Nigeria?
Yes, education will be brought back to its rightful place in our national life as it was in the late 1950s and 1960s the moment our rulers appreciate it as the catalyst to human and national development. It’s about the mindset of the ruling class. Assuming there is a law that forbids public officials from sending their children to private educational institutions (schools, colleges, universities, etc) or seeking education overseas, you can be sure that there would be a turn-around in the fortunes of local institutions in no time.
What do you think of the Nigerian lecturer recently sacked in Ghana for allegedly making inciting comments?
Our union had condemned the way the matter was handled by the Ghanaian authorities. The reports of arrest and media trial amounted to reducing a scholar of Prof Nwagbara’s status to a common criminal. The treatment reminded us of what some academics suffered under military dictatorship in Nigeria. The Kampala Declaration on the academic freedom of African scholars guarantees his right to freedom of intellectual analysis, especially because the Prof alleged that the video clip in question was tinkered with. Well, as we heard in the news the other day, Nigerian authorities claimed to have resolved the matter amicably.
