Reflections on ASUU strike

And I woke up this morning with a thought on the “Greedy Lecturers” that have refused to ask for a salary review in 11 years but only ask for university funding. The coming of #COVID19NIGERA, the lockdown and the ASUU strike have given us the opportunity to discuss the state of education and funding. While […]

And I woke up this morning with a thought on the “Greedy Lecturers” that have refused to ask for a salary review in 11 years but only ask for university funding.

The coming of #COVID19NIGERA, the lockdown and the ASUU strike have given us the opportunity to discuss the state of education and funding. While ASUU believes that at the stage where we are now, it should still be the responsibility of the government to fund education from primary to university level, those against ASUU’s ideology and hate the acronym ASUU think the government can’t afford to properly fund university and as a result, tuition should be introduced as done in western countries and proposed by the Government. And a set of ASUU members pissed off with the public perception about ASUU are of the opinion that since the students and parents who are the major beneficiaries of the ASUU’s university funding fight don’t see the need for the fight, why don’t ASUU then concentrate in getting a deal of better salary package compared with what is obtainable at CBN, NNPC, FIRS, DPR, etc. The argument was that University as a knowledge generation and human capital development institution deserve better pay compared with revenue generation organizations.

I will always recall the comment that  Oxford researchers are busy doing research on coronavirus while Lecturers in Nigerian universities are on strike. But forgot to mention that Oxford has the equivalent of billions of naira as research but Nigerian universities have zero naira as research budget.

Looking at education funding, Lets still use the UK, the home of our colonial masters as the reference country. There are 3 levels of education. The primary, secondary and tertiary education. And in the UK, primary and secondary schools are well funded and is completely free. Education is absolutely free in the UK for 18 years. There are Head Teachers in the UK with a salary higher than UK Members of the Parliament. And of course, a loan is available for those that wish to acquire university education. When you look at history, tuition was not introduced from the day universities started in the UK. The universities were funded to a level the universities can sustain themselves before the government stopped being the major funding body. And the government still massively fund research. You can see the government contribution from their annual financial report.

Then let’s come to Nigeria. In public primary schools in most states, especially in the North, kids sit on the floor because there are no desks and chairs in the classroom. I visited a primary school in my area 3 years ago and half of the classrooms have got no desks. In Kogi state, for example, the primary and UBE school teachers are paid 50% of their salary or less for the past 4 years. When you go to public secondary schools, the students sometimes sit on the window to receive a lesson and the teachers are poorly trained and not motivated. Since public primary and secondary schools are poorly funded and in a deplorable state, the confidence in the quality of learning is lost and private schools (a fast-growing business enterprise) now become the order of the day and public school left for those who can’t afford the private schools. The primary and secondary schools are poorly funded and the government can’t fund our universities. So what is the government funding? Does that mean the government can’t fund anything with the name education?

After the discussions over the last 5 weeks on ASUU strike, I am beginning to agree that the country cannot afford to fund university education as ASUU demanded since we have an expensive democracy to fund. That implies that if universities cannot be funded and the primary and secondary schools can also not be funded as we can see from the deplorable state of the schools, it can be concluded that our governments cannot afford to fund education at any level. Our economy cannot sustain it. The government schools at all levels should be auctioned and let the government hands off anything called education. Let Buhari share the universities to his friends and political associates who will be glad to have them at a giveaway price as they did to PHCN during GEJ and use the generated funds to fix roads and railway. That should be more prioritized than education. If education is made a private business, schools will become better in Nigeria and literacy level should improve the way electricity has improved tremendously since after privatization.

Stay safe!

Dr Abdelmalik Abdelgaffar Amoka, Department of Physics

Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.