When the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) declared a nationwide indefinite strike on July 1, 2013, the Nigerian populace knew that it was in for difficult times.
The strike was caused by the blatant refusal of the Jonathan administration to implement the agreement arrived at between the Federal Government and the union in 2009. Over the intervening four years, ASUU had employed a variety of methods and strategies, including public enlightenment campaigns and warning strikes, none of which appeared to sway government.
Events followed the usual pattern, with tough talk from both sides, and pleas for moderation from prominent citizens, parents and the university students themselves. In November, a marathon meeting with the union convened by President Goodluck Jonathan seemed to offer glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel. ASUU called a meeting of its executive in Kano to consider the Federal Government's latest offer. Further progress was tragically halted by the death of Professor Festus Iyayi, a respected former ASUU president, on his way to the talks.
The union's grief at Iyayi's untimely demise was aggravated by education minister Nyesom Wike's sudden imposition of a deadline for the striking university teachers to return to work by December 4 or be sacked. In the face of the resultant ASUU defiance, the deadline was extended to December 9. Some universities have directed all teaching staff to resume duties in anticipation of reopening.
It is surprising that the Federal Government would seek to worsen a crisis which it could have avoided with greater flexibility on its own part. Its own inability to adhere to the 2009 agreement is the root cause of the problem. For months, it refused to talk to ASUU, or even acknowledge the justness of its position. Instead of pursuing the apparent breakthrough in negotiations, it suddenly decided to resort to tactics that failed in the past when they were tried by a succession of military administrations. Rather than confront the real issues underpinning the strike, government has chosen to play the partisan card by insisting that ASUU was being used to undermine it.
Such tactics would be laughable if the situation was not so serious. Regardless of whether one agrees with ASUU or not, there is no doubt that tertiary education in Nigeria is in trouble. Apart from the so-called "crisis of access" in which barely 10 per cent of candidates seeking admission will be successful, there is the steady debilitation of infrastructure which has negatively affected the quality of education on offer. Classrooms are overcrowded, libraries and laboratories are inadequate, accommodation is grossly insufficient, and the entire university system is plagued with recurrent violence, malpractice and injustice.
The consequences are stark in their impact. To all intents and purposes, Nigerian universities are globally invisible, falling well outside the top one thousand in the world. On the Webometrics Ranking of Universities, the highest-placed Nigerian university is Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, which is ranked 8th in Africa and 1113th in the world. The University of Ibadan is 24th in Africa and 2109th in the world. The University of Lagos is 25th in Africa and 2149th in the world. As local schools continue to decline, their foreign counterparts have become correspondingly attractive: an estimated $1 billion is spent annually on universities abroad, including a staggering N160 billion on Ghanaian schools alone.
If an already bad situation is not to get infinitely worse, then both sides must stop seeking to score cheap points at the expense of each other. The Federal Government claims to have given ASUU proof of payment of the first tranche of N200 billion in accordance with the Aso Rock negotiations. The union should confirm this, and call off the strike as a sign of good faith.
ASUU will also need to ensure that it does not confront government obtuseness with its own intransigence. Rather than seek to make political capital out of the tragic Iyayi case, it should ensure that a thorough investigation is carried out to determine what happened and see that those found culpable are dealt with according to law. The union must also avoid the temptation to drag extraneous issues into its disagreements with government. For example, the insistence that state-owned universities be part of all negotiations is obviously a little too much to ask for, given the country's federal structure. It is only proper for such universities to talk to the state governments which own them, since the Federal Government cannot enter into any commitments on their behalf.
The ASUU strike has caused great suffering to millions of students, their parents and guardians, as well as the towns and cities in which universities are located. The abrupt suspension of academic activity has worsened the already-parlous situation in which the universities find themselves. With greater patriotism and sincerity of purpose on the part of government and ASUU, such a needless crisis will be avoidable in the future.
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