ASUU and Nigeria’s failing ways & means

Lekan Sote
| credits: File copy

The Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities went on strike a few months ago. When it looked like the Federal Government was not going to look their way, they and their civil society and students organisation friends, got together to stage a protest march. They said the Federal Government caused the strike because it reneged on an agreement it entered into sometime in 2009. The Federal Government had agreed to provide quality higher education, provide teaching and learning facilities and laboratory equipment for science students, pay N92 billion arrears owed to both academic and non-academic staff of federal government institutions, adjust retirement age of lecturers and progressively comply with UNESCO recommendation that education should receive 26 per cent of a country’s national budget. They added that ASUU had exhausted all avenues of labour relations, which included lobbying, negotiations, letters, warning strikes, (even) begging, press releases and press conferences — all to no avail. Last, week, they added another dimension — suspension of the strike for two weeks to enable them to reach a final agreement with the Federal Government. Football aficionados would call this a half-time break, which good coaches utilise to plan lethal strategies to enable players to do damage to the opponent. Thus if the two weeks of ‘new ultimate’ does not get more positive reaction from Government, ASUU may return to the trench with more daring…

Nigeria’s Ways & Means czarina, that is, Finance Minster, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, says, “No can’t do,” to ASUU demand for its N92 billion allowance arrears. It is instructive to note that the amount allocated to the entire education sector in the 2013 Federal Budget is N426.53 billion. If N92 billion is almost 22 per cent of the entire allocation of N426.53 billion to the education sector, there is a serious problem with the budget, its source(s) of funding and its capability to pay the arrears owed to the lecturers. But Okonjo-Iweala is going to have a hard time explaining to the likes of Bauchi Zone ASUU who query the statement credited to her, namely that the Federal Government could not pay the lecturers’ entitlements. The union thinks that the statement is not only embarrassing, but also dangerous to the future of education in Nigeria. Okonjo-Iweala will have an even harder time when you consider the views of her former colleague in the Obasanjo Federal Executive Council, Oby Ezekwesili, who swears that approximately N1 trillion — 82 per cent of which goes for recurrent expenditure — was spent on only the National Assembly in the last eight years. Ezekwesili, who has challenged the lawmakers to a public debate over her claims, insists that 69 per cent of Nigerians are living in poverty. And she has presented a ‘testimonial certificate’ from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics to prove it.

The N426.5 billion allocated to education this time, is the highest to any sector in the 2013 Budget. But then, it is a mere 8.7 per cent of the entire budget, still roughly 16 per cent shy of the 26 recommended by UNESCO. Many have applauded the ‘jumbo allocation’ to the education sector though, many others think it is inadequate. Professor of Science & Technology Education, Duro Ajeyalemi, complains that infrastructure in Nigerian universities are dilapidated, consumables are not provided, lecturers are not well remunerated, classes are overcrowded (a class meant to seat between 30 and 40 students now seats between 250 and 1,000), sometimes there are no furniture in the classrooms, and about 12 students live in a small room in the halls of residence. He adds that there is a need to reform the academic curriculum, as he notes that lecturers have no facilities to expand the fund of knowledge.

Dr. Oluwasina Olabanji, Executive Director, Lake Chad Research Institute, says, “Research facilities are not adequately funded. There is certain equipment that we need to have.” Timothy Isioma Odiaka, a Professor of Organometallics and Coordination Chemistry at University of Ibadan argues that Nigerian universities will have difficulties making the list of the best universities in the world, simply because of low funding. He reports that University of Ibadan placed 3,216th in the Webometrics world ranking of universities in 2012, and ranked 45th in Africa, after universities in South Africa and Ghana. He adds that Ghana allocates 31 per cent of its annual budget to education. Odiaka is worried that there is a shortage of about 30,000 lecturers in the 114 approved universities in the country. Some lecturers, he claims, moonlight in two or three universities at the same time. To improve the lot of Nigerian universities, Odiaka suggests: an increase of the annual budgetary allocation to education to 30 per cent; reduction of the number of Federal universities and giving to each an initial grant of $50 billion to accommodate more students, and equip the laboratories and libraries; make savings by reducing the huge salaries of political office holders; and establish an Equipment Factory to assemble research equipment needed by universities and polytechnics.

When presenting her overview of the 2013 Budget to the National Assembly, Okonjo-Iweala provided the following parameters: 2.53 million barrels of petroleum per day; a oil price benchmark of $79 per barrel; projected GDP growth rate of 6.5 per cent; and average Exchange Rate of N160 per dollar. With these, she expects a gross federally collective revenue of N11.34 trillion. She hopes that the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) would sustain its increase revenue collection efforts, while the Federal Government will find ways to enhance other internally generated revenue sources. With the shortage of petroleum resulting from the Syrian crisis, the price of crude oil shut up north to $106 per barrel. You should naturally think this is good news for the Nigerian economy. Wait until you read the following:

Industrial scale oil theft, sabotage and technical problems have caused Nigeria’s crude oil output to dip to a low of 1.9 million barrels per day. This reduced the Nigerian national revenue, 80 per cent of which is derived from oil & gas, and savings into the Excess Crude Account, which has dropped from $9 billion (in December 2012) to $5.1 (by mid-July). The 2013 Budget was based on a projected production of 2.6 million barrels per day.  Okonjo-Iweala claims that about 400,000 barrels is lost to bunkering and pipeline vandalising every day. The oil theft is either shipped abroad or refined in the illegal refineries in the Niger Delta. The Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Dele Ezeoba, groups crude oil theft with piracy and human trafficking as causes of slow economic growth of Nigeria, and indeed Africa. He asserts that security breach was a serious problem for both littoral and landlocked countries of Africa.

With all these complaints and helpless image cut by government functionaries, you get the impression that the ASUU request will not be met. The members will have to swallow the bitter pill of disappointment. There is simply no money to pay them. The managers of the economy have failed in their responsibilities. The matter now shifts back to ASUU; The economists among them must teach their students better ways of running an economy. In the meantime, Nigerian students will have to resort to completing their academics sans new knowledge, sans research laboratories, sans libraries. They will have to depend Wikipedia in place of their teachers and libraries.