Opinion: The ASUU strike is bad but Wike’s threat of mass sack is worse

by Wale Sokunbi

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These steps taken by Wike at the tail end of the efforts to end the strike, and at a time when the end of the industrial action was already in sight, questions the administrative sagacity of the minister and the Federal Government.

The lingering problem of the university teachers’ strike, which entered its sixth month last Sunday, has moved from the sublime to the ridiculous. All efforts by the Federal Government to end the debacle with a promise to pay N200 billion special intervention funds   annually to the universities, for five years, hit a brick wall. The lecturers, under the auspices of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), remained adamant, giving some conditions for calling off the strike. They also insisted on full payment of their salaries that were not paid for four months during the strike, and the documentation of the N200 billion intervention fund payment for 2013.

Supervising Minister for Education, Nyesom Wike, further compounded the problem last week when he directed that lecturers who refuse to resume work in the universities from December 4 (yesterday) should be sacked by the National Universities Commission (NUC). Security operatives were also deployed to university campuses, ostensibly to protect lecturers who are keen on abiding by the directive to resume work.

These steps taken by Wike at the tail end of the efforts to end the strike, and at a time when the end of the industrial action was already in sight, questions the administrative sagacity of the minister and the Federal Government.

The lecturers have rightly called the bluff of the minister and insisted on proper documentation of the claim by the Federal authorities that the N200 billion special intervention fund had already been paid by the Federal into a special Universities Infrastructure Fund in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). They are also insisting on payment of their outstanding salaries.

The complication of the resolution of the ASUU strike, which has been on since July, is rather unfortunate. When the government and ASUU agreed on the amount of intervention fund that would be paid to the universities few weeks ago, parents of university students that had been idling away at home thought that the resolution of this strike was just few days away.  Many of the affected students had begun packing their bags preparatory to going back to their campuses.

But alas, that was not to be as lecturers thereafter gave the unfortunate death of the respected Professor Iyayi on the way to the ASUU meeting where the matter of the strike was expected to be resolved, as a reason to suspend further deliberations, in his honour.

That decision was quite understandable. Iyayi died in a road accident involving the convoy of the Kogi State Governor, Idris Wada, on his way to the ASUU meeting. His death was yet another sad outcome of the sorry state of Nigerian roads and the recklessness of drivers in the convoys of political office holders in the country. The decision to postpone the deliberation on the strike was, therefore, in order.

But then, no one expected the suspension to last more than a week. Rumours, however, soon started filtering in that ASUU would not call off the strike until the middle of January, next year. Other reports said the strike would not be called off until Iyayi is buried.

Hapless students who, before Iyayi’s death, had expected that the calling off of the strike was only a matter of days, were crestfallen at this news.  Not long after, other reports emerged that the lecturers would not go back to work until they were paid their full salaries, which were not paid for four months during the strike in line with the nation’s labour laws.

That was the situation that required careful handling to ensure that the applecart of the efforts to get the lecturers back in the classrooms was not derailed, until the Federal Government, in apparent exasperation, misguidedly issued an ultimatum to the lecturers to resume work on December 4 (yesterday), or face mass sack.

Vice chancellors of universities were reportedly directed to declare vacancies for lecturers who refuse to sign up for work. The Federal Government also tried to engage the leaders of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).

The latest developments on this intractable strive are unfortunate, to say the least. It is bad enough that ASUU has been unduly belligerent in its stand. Although the union has always been quick to say that the strike is to improve the university system in the country, its decision to pursue this agenda with a refusal to teach for all of five months is antithetical to its professed love for the university system it is trying to improve.

The recalcitrant attitude of the lecturers has virtually alienated them from the people that they claim to be fighting for. But this does not justify the latter-day bravado of the education minister to sack them if they refuse to resume work by yesterday. It is not only inexpedient for the federal government to even think of sacking the teaching workforce of the federal universities, the timing of the mass sack threat, which came at the tail end of the crisis when the matter was almost finally resolved, is absurd.

But for the university students who had been kept away from their studies for so long, it would have been interesting to see how the education minister intends to replace the entire teaching workforce in all federal universities, if the lecturers refuse to pay attention to his threat.

The whole idea of a threat to sack the lecturers is, therefore, laughable. It is an attempt to solve, by force, a problem that had defied all logic and attempts at peaceful resolution for five months.

The decision to threaten a mass sack questions the minister’s grasp of the intricacies of administration. There was no need for him to pour oil on the fire of the raging ASUU strike when it had almost fizzled out, and the lecturers were only demanding assurances that government would not renege on its promise, as past governments had done.

Luckily, the federal government has said that it has paid the first tranche of N200 billion intervention fund for 2013 into a special university infrastructure account with the Central Bank of Nigeria. ASUU has demanded documentation to this effect. Let the government provide the documentation and avoid unhelpful strong-hand tactics in resolving this crisis so that the affected students can go back to their studies.

 

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Read this article in the Sun Newspapers

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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