8th October, 2013
It is very depressing that the nation’s tertiary education sector has been stymied by unending strikes by players in the sector following the Federal Government’s poor funding of the sector. Since 1 July the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has been on strike to demand for the implementation of the agreement it reached with the Federal Government in 2009. The government at the centre has continued to exhibit nonchalant attitude towards the plight of the teachers and the decrepit state of government owned universities.
In 2009 the Federal Government signed a nine-point agreement with ASUU, which included funding requirements for revitalisation of the Nigerian universities; Federal Government assistance to state universities; establishment of the Nigerian University Pension Management Committee, NUPEMCO and progressive increase in annual budgetary allocation to education to 26 per cent between 2009 and 2020; and earned allowances.
To date, the Federal Government has refused to honour the agreement despite several meetings held between the warring parties to resolve the burning issues. This is not the first time university lecturers have gone on strike to force the government to meet these agreements. But this latest strike by the university lecturers has become longer than necessary, yet the government doesn’t seem to be bothered about the negative effect it is having on thousands of students who have been at home all these months.
The Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities, SSANU, on 30 September, 2013, also began a nationwide indefinite strike over non-payment of August and September salaries to university workers. SSANU says it was disappointed that in spite of its members working to keep the universities going, the Federal Government and the universities’ councils resolved to punish them with the non-payment of their salaries for two months, saying that the strike had become inevitable.
Last week the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, ASUP, compounded the crises plaguing the nation’s tertiary institutions by also going on strike. ASUP wants the Federal Government to end the dichotomy between HND/University graduates in placement and career progression; setting up of governing councils for polytechnics; a white paper on visitation panels to polytechnics and a much-needed assessment of polytechnics. The polytechnic lecturers had gone on similar strike earlier this year for three months.
We are of the view that allowing the strikes by ASUU, ASUP and SSANU to persist will further imperil the tertiary education sector. This is why we appeal to the Federal Government to immediately put an end to the strikes by honouring the agreement reached with ASUU in 2009, pay the salaries of SSANU being owed them for two months as well as end the dichotomy between HND/University graduates in placement and career progression, among several other genuine demands by the lecturers.
We also appeal to tertiary institution lecturers to genuinely hold talks with the Federal Government in order to arrive at a compromise to end the strikes. We welcome every effort geared toward salvaging the parlous state of the nation’s tertiary education. Education is the bedrock of any nation. It should not be toyed with for any reason. Our leaders may send their children abroad to attend the best universities with funds stolen from tax payers because of the poor state of infrastructure in local universities, but they will return to the country to face children of the less privileged citizens who had no means to go abroad to school. Kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution, human trafficking, drug addiction, etc. may well be the outcome of the negligence of the education sector and lack of employment for teeming graduates.