In my last article on the current imbroglio entangling the All Progressives Congress (APC) government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) I wrote that “to hold out hope that the government will actually live up to its side of the bargain is to expect a miracle”. The government wasted no time in proving me right. In a move that is designed to show its utter contempt for the idea that Nigerian universities can ever be counted as institutions designed to attract the best scholars in any field, it decided to pay the academic staff in federal universities on a day by day basis without even confirming which session it is paying the lecturers for. In doing this the government is aware that no agency of government does this to its staff. It is clear that whoever made this decision thinks that universities are run like offices in the civil service. The unique nature of the arrangement of academic work in semesters and sessions is clearly lost to the person who came up with this idea. This again is proof of the degeneration in the capacity of public officials to craft relevant policy frameworks to meet the exigencies of addressing challenges in public life in Nigeria.
The legacy of universities that were the envy of Africa, the Commonwealth and the English speaking world in general that was the result of visionary foresight on the part of the early post-independence leadership in Nigeria has been squandered by successive military regimes and the leadership of the Fourth Republic. Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ahmadu Bello must all be spinning in their graves as a result of the bastardization of the quality of the educational institutions they created for their country when they were in power.
As the decline of the quality and capacity to manage public institutions has deteriorated in Nigeria, we see the incidence of leaders who are simply clueless as to how their actions intersect with the possibility of solving common problems or making them worse. The current APC government manifests this dimension at virtually all levels unfortunately. Using virtually all indices for human flourishing the situation in Nigeria has been consistently deteriorating since this government came into power in 2015. In all this time there have been opportunities to engage the problems confronting the country in a professional manner but in case after case and sector after sector this has not been done. Basic problems that can be resolved to the benefit of all parties involved have been left to fester and in some cases become endemic for all practical purposes. The impasse in the universities at this time is a glaring example of this.
There is something to be said about the contributions of ASUU to the university system in Nigeria. The most obvious one is the creation of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) which has done an immense amount of work trying to raise the standards of Nigerian universities to those of the best in global standards. Less well known is the 2009 agreement between ASUU and the Federal Government of Nigeria which has been codified as an Act of Parliament and contains provisions that can propel the Nigerian university system to global heights. The union is also responsible for most of the improvements in funding to the university system over the years to the detriment of increases in salaries for its members. As things stand lecturers in federal universities are owed at least six years backlog of earned academic allowances by the federal government. In many cases lecturers have died without ever collecting these allowances as have some of their direct beneficiaries. This situation is not usually made known when government officials bring up the policy of no work no pay. If the other side of this policy which should be no pay no work was to be invoked by ASUU, then the last six years might have been the period for the strike action. Be that as it may, the fact that five Nigerian universities are among the top one thousand two hundred in the world can clearly be shown to be the work of the contributions of the union and not the creativity of Nigerian politicians or top civil servants.
The University of Ibadan is the 4th best in Africa and the 349th in global rankings. The University of Lagos is the 14th best in Africa and the 587th in global rankings. The Obafemi Awolowo University is the 45th in Africa and the 1,088th in global rankings while the University of Nigeria Nsukka is the 49th in Africa and the 1,198th in global rankings. These achievements are laudable and Nigeria can do much more. The challenges here aren’t more daunting than what confronted the nation just after we attained independence from Britain in 1960. The difficulties of creating a sustainable political system during the First Republic whose failure led to the civil war and an era of military rule which lasted (with a four year gap during the Second Republic) for thirty three years were really daunting. So many precious Nigerian lives have been lost. However somehow Nigeria has persisted and actually thrived in many areas. The fact that the nation has made it this far ought to instill in all Nigerians a conviction that collectively we have something to teach the world. Instead we are joined to politicians who think that their primary function is to deny the country the ability to have a voice at the global market place.
An aspect of the sheer bankruptcy of these leaders is the fact that when accolades are poured on outstanding individuals of Nigerian origin when they achieve something spectacular, they are quick to cash in on the shower of praises. When however they are called upon to create enabling conditions to replicate the achievements of these outstanding individuals they react negatively and without shame resist making any improvements that can build the talents and capacities of young Nigerians. These are people who react with admiration at the fact that much of the ICT world is dominated by people of Indian origin but cannot creatively use the positions they occupy in government to harness the obviously broad and deep pool of talents that young Nigerians possess in ICT development. This attitude of the typical Nigerian politician created the circumstance in which Nollyood and the wider Nigerian entertainment industry attained to global fame despite the absence of government aid to them. The same can be said of the administration of football and other athletic sports.
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