Amid the ongoing nationwide strike embarked upon by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, the president of the striking union, Emmanuel Osodeke, in this interview with TIMOTHY AGBOR, urges Nigerian parents and students not to leave the struggle for lecturers alone. Osodeke bares his mind on the challenges facing the university system and why the current industrial action may be prolonged among other issues. Excerpts:
How do you react to opinions in some quarters that ASUU strike hasn’t yielded any results and therefore, an alternative to strike should be sought?
It is not true that the strike is not yielding results. The problem we are facing is that most governors in this country are not Nigerians. They have their families abroad and they go there whenever they are tired of the mess they have caused in this country. You can see they don’t receive medical treatment in Nigeria neither do they have their children in our universities. Everything about their (governors) lives is done abroad. They don’t even rest in Nigeria. I think that as we are approaching another election, we should ask our politicians to show us where their family is before they can earn our votes. So, we want the people of Nigeria to tell us the alternative. We have exhausted all the alternatives. Nobody likes strikes. We (ASUU) don’t like strikes. We were forced to go on strike and in a normal clime, when you see unions go on strike, the government intervenes immediately and resolves it before it goes out of hand but here, they won’t do anything. So, we don’t like strikes and my children are at home.
So, what’s the federal government saying?
The situation remains the way it is. We have not heard anything from the government and we have not discussed it. We are waiting for them. We don’t know when we are meeting with them (government) because they have not sent out any invitations.
What’s really wrong with our education system?
A lot is wrong. Our government is not serious and committed to the growth of our university system. We have people who have no business in university or in running schools like tertiary institutions that are now in our ivory towers. Appointments into universities have been politicized. The proliferation of universities is part of the reason why we are on strike. There is no benchmark in the payment of salaries. I feel that someone who performs should be better paid than someone who doesn’t. Some have said that because of the ASUU strike, students have stayed more than four to six years at home, and what I replied is that is it better to spend two years and graduate and destroy the country than to spend extra two years and rebuild the country? We need to ask ourselves this question. When we were here in the 70s and 80s, we had never heard of building collapse in Nigeria. No, it has never happened. Today, there is no week a building does not collapse in Nigeria, including a 21-storey building. What has happened, because we neglected our education?
How did we get here?
Poor funding, poor recruitment policies, over politicization and interference from various groups, obsolete facilities, ethnicity, proliferation of universities and inferiority complex by Nigerians and the political leaders.
Our degree is better than those abroad but for our politicians, it’s a pride that their children are somewhere outside whether the child is in Benin Republic or Mali, the politician feels it’s still better than Nigeria.
That’s an inferiority complex that our leaders have developed. You know why, all these leaders that we have today, 90 percent of them passed through our university system, public, primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. But today, they now take their children to school in Ukraine. What is Ukraine by Nigerian standard that today you have 5,000 Nigerian students schooling in Ukraine? Our students had a crisis and they are all at home and the government has not called us for one meeting but when there was a crisis for rich men in Ukraine, they spent N40 billion to go and bring those rich children home. You (Federal Government) spent that money but you didn’t spend one Kobo to revitalize your university for your children to attend. That is an inferiority complex. The issue of temporary appointment and regularization is another challenge to our university system. Today, you have people with HND and PGD now as lecturers in the university. We have those who have third class and pass degrees who are now lecturers in the universities because they came in through this process. We can’t get rid of them because everyday universities are created and somebody must teach them.
Some state universities have not allowed their lecturers to join the strike. How do you react to this?
The lack of understanding and misgivings about the activities of our union, particularly as it regards our struggle, which is the mechanism through which lots of benefits are coming to the federal and state universities today, should be supported rather than criticized. The idea of state universities started in 1959 with the establishment of Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Port-Harcourt, now Rivers State University, Port-Harcourt. In the early part, the four universities you have then, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, University of Ife, Ahmadu Bello University, were all regional universities. Regions translated to state today. Only one was a state university, which was University College, Ibadan which was created by the Colonial masters. The quality of teaching and learning in those days were comparable anywhere in the world. But today, where are we? This level of competitiveness then was as a result of the seriousness state governments accorded them in terms of adequate funding, lack of political interference, and topnotch governance system, that finds pleasure in quality, creativity, and commitments of that university governance, particularly the Governing Councils. As at that time, the visitor would appoint into the Council, those who will bring to the university and not those who will come and collect from the university, like what we have today.
“The situation remains the way it is. We have not heard anything from the government and we have not discussed it. We are waiting for them. We don’t know when next we are meeting with them (government) because they have not sent out any invitations”
How do you react to the recent protests by Ife indigenes over the appointment of OAU Vice Chancellor?
A few months ago, a tragic precedent was created in Nigeria and it’s going to haunt us for a very long time if we don’t do something. That is the University of Ibadan, ceding that the Vice Chancellor must come from Ibadan and it passes through. Today, it’s Ife (OAU). It’s going to cascade to all other universities. That is going to be the next struggle in Nigeria about the appointment of Vice Chancellor. Today, we are even carrying juju to go and block a university because the Vice Chancellor did not come from the location of the university. People have also criticized ASUU, so why are you struggling? Why are you talking about state universities being under the same union? The Nigerian public universities, especially, the state universities are presently in terrible state due to various challenges and attempts by the political class to appropriate them as parts and parcel of their political fiefdom by reducing the state universities to constituency projects. Visitors only establish universities without thinking about how they are going to fund them. By doing so, the idea of a university, as a centre of knowledge with a universal template has been perverted and compromised. We have lost the locus of what a university was and have deviated and continue to deviate until we find ourselves and come back to what a university used to be. People say strikes have prevented foreign students from coming to Nigeria for their studies and I said it’s not true. A university in Ghana closed up for two years and they just resumed, still, Nigerians are going to Ghana to study. It has not prevented our parents from sending their children to study in Ghana.
One of the things that destroyed our university system is the World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme, and the crisis of governance in Nigerian Universities. Their interference in our system is the major cause of these problems that we have today. Nigeria was running well when we were looking inwards and solving our problems. Somewhere along the line, we brought in this so-called World Bank and they came here and confused many of us that today, you have a federal government of Nigeria that could not look inwards among its lecturers who are very intelligent to develop a modem for paying salaries of its workers. They have to go and beg the World Bank to plan a programme for them to pay salaries. The World Bank negotiated and brought a programme to the government and converted that money to debts. Today, we are all paying the price. The country is paying the price. I refer you to the Auditor General’s report of 2019 and see the debt we owe. Two, they (World Bank) came here and said the Nigerian government should not put emphasis on tertiary education, that they should pursue primary and secondary, the Governor of Ebonyi State said he is not interested in university, that his interest is in primary and secondary. They are buying that ideology. And why are they doing it? Once you deemphasize the tertiary at the highest level, they will bring their people for you. As we have it today, if Nigeria wants to construct a road, it has to be done by a foreign company with some prisoners in China.
ASUU started in 1979 and ever since, we have paid debts. One of our presidents, Atahiru Jega would have died in an accident if not for God’s intervention. We have done several negotiations with the government for them to reposition our university system but the government refused. Our people have been arrested and imprisoned. As of today, a Professor in Nigeria earns between $400 and $600 a month. Which lecturer will come from outside to earn that? That’s our tragedy! That’s why they (foreign lecturers) are not coming. We negotiated this thing in 2009 and by 2022, the government is still insisting on that. The effect is that our colleagues are leaving in droves.
What’s the way forward?
ASUU has done its own and we have challenged the parents and students that any day they take over this struggle, we will go back to the classrooms and we will struggle no more. In the 70s, remember ‘Ali Must Go’ was done by the students; but now, you see a Student Union leader driving three Prados, SUG 01, SUG 02, SUG 03 and wearing very fine suits. Thank God the parents are beginning to understand us. When parents and students take over this struggle, we will go back to the classroom. It’s vital to make it very clear that neither I nor ASUU are meddlesome interlopers in the state university business in Nigeria. As of today, out of the 2, 168, 18 students in Nigeria University system, 1, 474, which is 60 percent of students are in Federal Universities, 26 percent are in the State Universities, and 5 percent or less are in the private universities. Based on this, we can classify our state universities into three generations. The first is the first generation universities, those established between 1979 and 1999, and the third one which I classified as constituency project universities which were mainly established just for the ego of the governors and nothing else. Some of these universities will be closed down as soon as the governor exits office. Today, all these categories of universities including the first, second and third generations have been reduced to constituency projects because those governors have completely abandoned the funding of these universities. There has to be a paradigm shift by the federal government and state governors placing education as number one priority.
