The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, in this interview with FRIDAY OLOKOR, says the union’s age-long battle with the Federal Government, which has seen students being shut out of campuses for long months, is far from over
ASUU President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke
ASUU and the Federal Government have continued to battle over some irreconcilable differences. What are the outstanding issues?
Well, if you recall, the issue we are talking about started in 2009 when ASUU and the Federal Government reached an agreement on a number of issues, including the funding of our universities, welfare of our members. We also agreed that our agreement would be reviewed every three years and now this is 12 years after and that agreement has not been reviewed. You should also know that at that time in 2009, our exchange rate was less than N100 per dollar and today it is about N500 per dollar and what that means is that even the salaries of lecturers have reduced by 500 times and nothing has been done.
Our reality is that while Nigerian lecturers go outside the country to teach, no foreigner can come to teach in Nigeria. Any country you go to, you will see a Nigerian lecturing because of the fluidity of the university system in those places, but nobody from outside this country, not even from the Republic of Benin, will want to come and teach in Nigeria because our payment and welfare have been degraded. The situation is that universality is leaving the Nigerian university system. That was one of the major issues we talked about in 2009 that the government refused to implement.
Two, the cost of training one Nigerian student effectively is about N1.2m. But today, we are not anywhere near that. We don’t have the infrastructure, we don’t have the laboratories.
In 2012 when the Federal Government did NEEDS Assessment, all these issues were brought out very clearly and the government agreed with us that over three years, they would devote about N1.3tn to revamp the Nigerian university system. The first tranche was released in 2013 by (former) President Goodluck Jonathan and that was the last time that a major amount has been released. So, what we are talking about is that agreement, all the Memoranda of Action and Memoranda of Understanding that we all signed, including the last one that we reached in December 2019. You are also aware that after our strike, at that time, they agreed to release by January 2020 N30bn as revitalisation fund, but till now that money has not been released.
We have been very patient in the interest of the Nigerian students and the Nigerian populace but government has to work hard to address the issues they agreed to in December 2009.
It appears that the government finds the demands by ASUU too tough to meet. Why is that so?
One, it’s the (lack of) will; two, it is a ploy by government to ensure that you have two classes of Nigerian children–the class of the rich and government officials who go abroad to get quality education, who will come back and occupy their so-called lucrative positions in the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation soon and the children of the ordinary Nigerians who have to attend our universities that are not funded and cannot compete with the children of the rich.
There was a bank that was going to go bankrupt about four years ago. The government gave a bailout of over N1tn to revive that bank owned by private people. But ASUU has quoted that N1.3tn was needed to revamp all Nigerian universities, whether federal or state for the past three years and the government said they don’t have money. Does that make sense? You can bail out just one bank with over N1tn and then the entire universities in Nigerian put together, you can’t put in N1.3tn.
Today, the only problem we have is education; once you kill your education system, your country is gone, which is what we have today. The money they use to award contracts for railways and others is more than what we are asking for. Education is the key and number one. There was a Prime Minister in Britain, who said his number one priority was education, number two was education, number three was education. But for our leaders, education does not seem to matter to them. You know why? Because their children are not in Nigerian universities.
If we can have a law that says that once you are in government or you take a government appointment, your children must school in Nigeria, the system will change.
About two weeks ago, I understand the President of Nigeria–(Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)–established four new universities. Is there anywhere in the world where you have University of Transportation, does it make sense?
If you want to teach transportation, why don’t you go to an existing university and start a Faculty of Transportation and fund it appropriately? Why establish a University of Transportation, Maritime University, University of Medical Sciences? Where were they in the 70s and 80s when our universities were doing well? What we are saying now is that Nigeria has transformed university to what we refer to as constituency projects not as universities to serve the needs of the people. These are part of our concerns.
How will you respond to critics who believe that ASUU has contributed to the existing problems in the public universities by embarking on so many strikes actions, thereby disrupting academic calendar and making students spend additional years in school and graduate at an age that limits their economic opportunities?
I will give you an example; if ASUU has behaved like other unions, today, we will not have public universities. Today, the other unions in the educational sector gave up at the primary and secondary levels. Today, you don’t have public primary and secondary schools. For the average Nigerian man, their children are not in public primary and secondary schools. A lot of Nigerians have removed their children from there because in many of the states, they are dead because the teachers are not being paid, the schools are not refurbished.
As of today, more than 70 per cent of Nigerian children are in private primary and secondary schools. As I speak to you, only less than five per cent of Nigerian children are in private universities. When we were in school, the minimum UTME score you must have to gain admission was 180/400; today it has gone down to 120 and you know why? They did it to entice people to go to private universities. No public university will accept 120 as UTME score for admission. But even with that, more than 95 per cent of Nigerian students still want to go to public universities and the only reason we are having that is because of ASUU struggle. Any day we surrender, these private universities will hijack our educational system and that will be the end. I will tell you that the implication of this is that most of the degrees you have from those places are fake. Universities in Nigeria today award the highest number of first class honours worldwide.
You mean private universities?
Yes, private universities, where more than 15 per cent of our children will get first class honours, which is extraordinary excellence, not just excellence. Upper Credit is excellence. If you go to universities in the world, less than one per cent will get first class but here in Nigerian universities 15 per cent will get first class. How is it awarded?
Does that not speak to the quality of teaching infrastructure and funding, for instance, in a private university like Covenant University where recently 201 students graduated with first class honours?
PUNCH
