From the Guardian. on Sunday 21st of July 2003. AS the strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) progresses beyond the second week, the decadence in the nation’s tertiary education system is further revealed and the insensitivity of its management fully advertised. The strike is to register the displeasure of university teachers over the Federal Government’s alleged refusal to pay their earned allowances for excess workload, postgraduate teaching and supervision, all of which had been owed them since 2009. However, ASUU President, Nasir Fagge Isa, volunteered that the ongoing strike action is beyond “allowances” for university teachers. According to him, the fundamental cause of the strike is failure of the government to honour a Memorandum of Understanding it signed on January 24, 2012 to comprehensively implement the 2009 Agreement signed by both parties. The main thrust of that agreement is the following: funding of the universities to provide infrastructure and facilitate teaching and learning; university autonomy and academic freedom; improved staff welfare and condition of service to attract the best hands and discourage brain-drain, and other matters. Of the nine items further delineated by the MoU, the government is claiming to have fully implemented two: the review of the retirement age of professors in the professorial cadre from 65 year to 70 years and the re-instatement of governing councils. The remaining seven items bordering on funding of universities, university autonomy and academic freedom, staff welfare and condition of service have not been addressed. Compared to ASUU’s comprehensive articulation of its grouse, the Federal Government’s response has been far from convincing. Apart from its expression of shock at the strike and the claims that discussions are ongoing with ASUU’s leaders, there has been an uncanny silence from government quarters that may spell ominous consequences. When Federal Government vacillates, as it usually does, or signs an agreement it knows, ab initio, it would not honour, it is definitely postponing the evil day. Since the 2009 agreement, government has set up fact-finding missions to ascertain the state of Nigerian universities. Panels of inquiries for needs assessment for universities have been set up and reports have been submitted, yet the authorities in the education sector seem to have shunned implementation of the recommendations. Meanwhile, the budgetary allocation for education is still nowhere near the 26 per cent benchmark recommended by the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). With overcrowded classrooms, dilapidated infrastructure, ill-motivated staff and students and, in some cases, unqualified staff, Nigerian universities have fallen to the level of routine producers of uncultured or uneducated school leavers. Nigeria cannot pretend that all is well; and if this is what ASUU seeks to address, then it needs the support of both government and the people. To address the remote and proximate causes of this strike, the Federal Government must, without delay, honour the agreement it freely entered into with ASUU. It is demeaning, despicable, and an expression of lack of integrity on government’s part to renege on its promise. One of the hallmarks of good governance is integrity; and this is an all-important virtue required of those who claim to superintend such an important sector as education. The excuse that the government cannot afford to adequately fund university education is dishonest in the face of a situation in which government officials and politicians continue to engage in unconscionable pillaging of state funds. Besides, it is a shameful representation of the leadership quality of those in the corridors of power in this administration, just as it is an indictment of academics and their inability to lead at the highest level of governance. For how can one explain the leadership quotient of a government saturated with academics, and, ipso facto, ASUU members, and yet so incapacitated to raise the bar in the education sector? In consonance with a liberal tradition that stimulates growth and progress, unpopular but wise stance that University Autonomy holds the key to world class university education is unassailable. University autonomy should not be misconstrued as government handing off the funding of universities, or the monetization of university education, but rather it entails giving universities the freedom to govern themselves, appoint key officers, determine the conditions of service of their staff, control their students’ admissions and academic curricula, control their finances and generally regulate themselves as independent legal entities without undue interference from the government and its agencies. Contrary to the position of autonomy phobics, a well-designed autonomy has invaluable benefits for the educational sector and the country in general. Whereas tokenist expansionism is carried out by the government (as if more universities are an indication of economic growth), autonomy will entrench the inexorable symbiosis between the quality of universities and the intellectual capital of a country. For both faculty and students, a well-harnessed autonomy will dismantle the old order that views university education as a “social rite of passage” before getting a good job or “a dividend of democracy” for an ethnic group or locality, and re-introduce the value of scholarship, to the positive transformation of the immediate environment and contribution to global culture and civilization. Oxford University’s chancellor Chris Patten, succinctly argues that university autonomy: “Independent universities should be regarded as part of the infrastructure of an open and plural society, inculcating the values of tolerance, moderation and freedom that help to keep our country more or less civilised.” Devoid of any elitist or classist agenda, university autonomy will push all universities to the limit, and separate the “wheat from the chaff”. And so rather than merely produce graduates, universities will compete to be the best in the supply of well- qualified and well-educated workforce and citizenry, out of which the country draws the capital for its well-being. Any nation desirous of progress should not be afraid of this. Nigerian leaders cannot extol competition in other sectors of the economy and maintain a centrist controlling posture on university education. This is the problem of tertiary education in Nigeria. And it must end.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 04:10:48 +0000
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