– ASUU needs to radically decentralize its operations and negotiations so that multiple agreements reflecting different institutional, regional, and local conditions can be negotiated separately and crafted accordingly
By Prof Moses Ochonu
As another storm of ASUU strike gathers, here, once again, are my unpopular opinions on the matter:
ASUU members have legitimate grievances and demands regarding their compensation and other benefits.
The strike model is outdated and ineffective as has been proven time and again. Not only are agreements not fulfilled, both ASUU and the FG know that the FG will not and in some cases cannot fulfill the agreements they sign, but they both continue the sham, each party trying to one up the other. The perennial melodrama and performance are getting tiresome for the public.
In the case of ASUU, strikes are now largely counterproductive, eroding the union’s reputation in the mind of the Nigerian public, exposing it to credible charges of indifference to the plight of Nigerian students, and undermining any goodwill and leverage the union still possesses.
ASUU lack creativity and the capacity for self critique and self reflexivity, and they’re impervious to new ideas. They’re stuck in a world of struggle that no longer exists, and in an ideology of higher education as a solely state-funded public good that is now passé. Every effort to make them see why some of their demands cannot coexist comfortably with an ever-expanding portfolio of state-subsidized tertiary education without embracing creative funding models has failed. Something has to give, as you cannot have it both ways, but the ASUU people don’t get it.
They say there is no alternative to strikes, but when an alternative is suggested, they impulsively shut it down, saying it would not work and that the only language the FG understands is the language of strikes. The conversation is thus cyclical and unproductive. Trying to engage ASUU is like bouncing a ball repeatedly off a wall.
What ASUU and their negotiating dance partner, the FG, do every two or three years (negotiate increasingly meaningless and unimplementable agreements to end strikes then repeat the routine when, predictably, the agreement is ignored or only partially implemented) is the classic definition of stupidity, that is, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
ASUU loathe responsibility and accountability. For instance, if you ask them what they would give or do differently as academics and lecturers to raise the quality (and quantity) of instruction and research if/when the FG meets all their legitimate demands, they have no answer except to spew outmoded mid 20th century neo-Marxist jargons about how the people posing the questions are capitalist sellouts.
ASUU won some victories over the years, not just in terms of members’ benefits but also in the form of systemic reforms such as the education tax, which funds TETFUND, which in turn funds most tertiary education infrastructure projects nowadays. However, these victories have not produced improvements in the quality of teaching and research, the core missions of a university. Instead, these victories seem to have had an inverse effect on these metrics as we have seen a depressing deterioration in teaching, mentorship, and research standards.
The failure of ASUU’s victories to translate to noticeable improvements in teaching and research clearly shows that more money, what ASUU likes to call funding, is not the problem per se, and that internal factors such as corruption, absence of commitment on the part of many lecturers, poor ethics, laziness, bad academic job recruitment practices, careerist resistance to rigorous academic publishing requirements and scrutiny, and the absence of proper academic accountability metrics are major problems that need to be addressed.
This is the twenty first century. There is absolutely no reason for academics spread across different institutions in different regions of a populous and big country with diverse socioeconomic and institutional realities to negotiate uniform conditions of service. ASUU needs to radically decentralize its operations and negotiations so that multiple agreements reflecting different institutional, regional, and local conditions can be negotiated separately and crafted accordingly.
Centralized employment contracts that apply to all ASUU members uniformly in a mechanical sense of rank and step (similar to the civil service) without provisions for rewarding exceptional productivity, great teaching, and research achievement beyond the minimum (and retrogressive) quantitative requirement, and without recognition for differences in work rate, rigor, and outcome among lecturers, are a disincentive to teaching and research effort, excellence, and distinction. Centralized, national academic contracts are relics of the 20th century, unsuited to the realities and imperatives of the twenty first century academy.
My ASUU friends, as always, I come in peace. Take the message and look inward in self-critical introspection, even if you don’t like the messenger.