ASUU/ FGN Agreements And The Fate Of Nigerian Universities To an outsider not living in Nigeria, from about 1992, a major determinant of national university policy appears to be the agreement negotiated between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN). These agreements officially referred to as the ASUU/FGN Agreements have also come to be the major determinant of academic peace, stability and quality on most university campuses. Once again, as has been the case on an average of ten years since 1992, the academic peace, stability and standard has come under severe strain due to disagreements between the signatories to another agreement — the 2009 ASUU/FGN Agreement on state of implementation. The normal academic calendar for the 2012/2013 academic session has been truncated by about eight weeks as at this date on the basis of this disagreement. This is ludicrous. An agreement is in jurisprudence binding and, therefore, subject to judicial interpretation should any of the parties to the agreement have reason to believe that the terms are not followed. The ASUU/FGN Agreements shouldn’t have been a different exemption from this universal jurisprudential principle especially in a democracy like Nigeria. Unfortunately, the parties to the 2009 ASUU/FGN Agreement, though strong advocates, believers and supposed adherents of democratic principles, believed otherwise as strikes, blackmail and threats appear to be the accepted modus operandi by signatories to the ASUU/FGN Agreements. The immediate victims are not the signatories but the Nigerian society who must trail behind others in Africa and elsewhere on the international scene in this regard. For one, ASUU has nothing to lose from the truncation of academic programmes and the abridgment of academic syllabuses that turns out unemployable graduates as a result of the adoption of the strike option in favour of judicial resolution. In a similar way, the Federal Government also has nothing to lose but much to gain politically by adopting dialogue and resorting to political solutions to an otherwise simple and much more cost effective judicial solution. The main point of contention that led to the current ASUU strike among the signatories to the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement is the level of implementation. While ASUU termed the level of implementation “unsatisfactory’, the FGN maintained that they have abided and are implementing all the terms of the 2009 ASUU/FGN Agreement which they have met substantially. No matter how hard each party tries to justify its position, the resolution reached by both parties at a meeting in which ASUU and the FGN, represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), the Minister of Labour & Productivity (HML&P) and the Minister of Education (HME) and then signed by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education and the ASUU Vice-President on April 9, 2013 shows that the FGN and ASUU are on common grounds on the level of implementation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement. Of the seven items covered by the FGN/ASUU Resolution on the level of implementation viz: funding, progressive increase of annual budgetary allocation to 26 percent by 2020, earned academic allowances, establishment of pension fund administrator (NUPEMCO), university governing councils, transfer of landed property to the universities and budget monitoring, it is only on earned allowances that the resolution called for further action before it could be implemented The necessity for further action is because at the ASUU NEC meeting of February 8, 2013, ASUU decided to abandon the calculation of the excess workload component of earned allowance based on full time equivalent (FTE) approved by the FGN/University-Based Unions Agreements Implementation Monitoring Committee sent to all vice-chancellors of federal universities on July 11, 2011. Instead, ASUU opted for an across the board 15 percent of the wage bill of each University to be paid as earned allowance and demanded 81 billion naira (N81 billion) from FGN. The demand of ASUU will increase total personnel cost of Universities from 92.37% to 94.56% at the expense of capital and overhead costs of total appropriations of Federal Universities in the fiscal year, 2012. How has the FGN/ASUU Agreements help arrest the deplorable infrastructural decay in federal universities? The 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement stipulated that earned allowances are to be paid to entitled academic staff only. The FGN party to the 2009 ASUU/FGN Agreement called for ‘appropriate and sustainable strategy’ for implementation. The FGN/ASUU Resolution of April 9, 2013 resolved that the parties to the resolution will meet in two weeks to consider the FGN position. The ASUU team promised to convey the FGN/ASUU Resolution of April 9, 2013 to its NEC meeting to be held in Makurdi April 13, 2013. It is not clear what happened after the FGN/ASUU Resolution was signed on April 9, 2013 that prompted ASUU to declare a strike action on July 1, 2013 but the government has released the sum of 30 billion Naira representing 37 percent of ASUU demand of N81 billion and has directed Federal Universities Councils to work out the modalities for paying entitled staff. Certain salient issues can be discerned from the FGN/ASUU tango. One is the abandonment of the national university policy to a trade union, ASUU, creating conflicts and rivalries between ASUU and the National University Commission (NUC), the official regulatory agency and vehicle for implementation of government policies on federal universities on one hand and the governing councils of the universities on the other. This has brought about great confusion to vice-chancellors, students and other stake holders of federal universities.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 09:17:51 +0000
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