Comrades and compatriots of the Press, our union, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) held its National Executive Council (NEC) meeting at the Obafemi Awołowo University, Ile-Ife, between Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th May 2024.
The Union assessed the outcomes of its engagements with the State and Federal governments over the last few months, on matters pertaining to the status of developments around the renegotiated 2009 Agreement, reconstitution of governing Councils, payment of owed salaries and earned academic allowances (EAA), unremitted deductions made by the discredited disruptive and discredited IPPIS, and a number of other matters NEC also had a critical review of government policies and actions that had led to the present deteriorated living and working conditions across the country and in our universities particularly.
It was generally acknowledged that the political elite in Nigeria has continued to unleash anti-people and anti-intellectual policies which continued to plunge the Nigerians into despondency and thereby making long-term development of our universities and indeed the educational system a mirage.
The grip of the political class on our people, their actions and policies continues to give kick to their adopted master-servant relationship in relating with the academia and indeed the Nigerian people.
Our Union, as one of the voices of the oppressed people of this country would not relentless.
1.RENEGOTIATION OF FGN/ASUU 2009 AGREEMENT
Comrades and compatriots, the renegotiated 2009 Agreement which lasted for five years remained in its draft form, owing to the refusal of Government to either sign the document or request for a review if it has issues with certain areas.
The Agreement, as you might be aware from past documents, covers not just conditions of service (salaries and allowances), but funding of Universities, university Autonomy and Academic Freedom and other matters.
The refusal of Government to conclude the renegotiation gives indication of lack of understanding of the profound nature of the document such that government is now pretending that giving a salary award has now rested the matter.
The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention No. 98 addresses the principle of collective bargaining within which our union continues to engage government on this topic. The ILO’s C095 Protection of Wages Convention, 1949provides for “mutual agreement in alteration of wages payable in virtue of a written or unwritten contract of employment by an employer to an employed person” (Article 1) The proviso of ILO’s C095 (Article 2 1 & 2) assert.
This Convention applies to all persons to whom wages are paid or payable
The competent authority may, after consultation with the organizations of employers and employed persons directly concerned, if such exist, exclude from the application of all or any of the provisions of the Convention categories of persons whose circumstances and conditions of employment are such that the application to them of all or any of the said provisions would be inappropriate and who are not employed in manual labour or are employed in domestic service or work similar thereto”
2. NON-RELEASE OF WITHHELD SALARIES AND ARREARS OF EARNED ACADEMIC ALLOWANCES
Comrades and compatriots, Our Union continues to draw the attention of all and sundry to the withheld salaries of academics in Nigerian Universities, arising from our immediate past struggle to get a better deal for the Universities.
Recent developments around the issues that instigated the last strike action (poor funding. equally abysmal condition of service, IPPIS and erosion of University autonomy, etc) have convincingly vindicated the Union.
It is, therefore, inconceivable that a government that operates on the platform of “Renewed Hope” should hold on to the meagre salaries of workers even with the erosion of the value of the real value of the salaries due to its unguarded economic policies. If the government fails to pay the three and a half months outstanding salaries and the arrears of earned academic allowances, our Union is prepared to use all legitimate means to ensure payment including but not limited to invoking “No Pay. No Work.”
3. THE INTEGRATED PERSONNEL AND PAYROLL INFORMATION SYSTEM
Compatriots, we are sure of saying nothing new because the world already knows that IPPIS is a deceitful platform that has caused untold suffering for Nigerian scholars and workers, especially in the manner it was deployed by powerful government officials and their henchmen to enrich themselves at the expense of hardworking Nigerians. More significantly ASUU has continuously opposed IPPIS since it flagrantly infringes upon our universities’ autonomy.
Unfortunately, more than four months after the government floated the notion of removing universities and other educational institutions from the discredited payment platform, the grip of IPPIS on the universities is far from being over. As of right now, third-party deductions from our members salary such as cooperative contributions, pension deductions, and union check-off dues remain arbitrarily withheld.
The platform, with all of its complications, is utilized to pay our members under the pretext of the “New IPPIS,” which is in opposition to the agreement made at the stakeholders’ meeting held at the National Universities Commission (NUC) on January 11, 2024.
In this aspect, our union stance is unwavering. The government ought to go back to releasing university funding on a quarterly basis so that the institutions can create and carry out their own salary payment programs under the guidance of their Governing Councils.
This represents the benchmark of a fully autonomous university system, as observed in universities in Nigeria at inception. The government ought to direct the immediate release of all pending deductions, unpaid promotion arrears, and university academic salaries that were unfairly withheld by the dishonest IPPIS regime in the interest of industrial harmony.
In addition, Government must clean its house by ensuring that all that have been identified with the IPPIS fraud are taken through disciplinary process. Until this is done, the dramatis personae would still be finding ways to continue to defraud Universities and unsuspecting Nigerians
4. PROLIFERATION OF UNIVERSITIES
As you may recall, one of the main issues that sparked a string of strikes between 2020 and 2022 was the proliferation of universities. Our union hereby reiterates its demand that the NUC Act be fully reviewed as agreed in 2020 to strengthen it and make it more capable of sifting off proposals for the unnecessary and irrational establishment of universities, as outlined in the ASUU-FGN Memorandum of Action (MoA). ASUU and NUC joint committees presented a draft bill to the National Assembly on this topic during the immediate past legislative session.
The bill’s altruistic trajectory for the system, we assume, was not compatible with the manner in which the country’s political elite have contemptuously turn Universities into constituency projects. There is the need to revisit this bill, in the interest of the country.
…. As emphasized by our Union’s most recent press conference “ASUU is going to explore all available legal options to oppose the widespread attempts by politicians to continue the proliferation of crisis centers for youths with limited resources under the guise of universities”
5. FUNDING OF UNIVERSITIES
ASUU’s interactions with various governments all through the years about public university funding have been based on a baseline of annual budgetary requirements for education that has been developed scientifically. Our union has by this encouraged Government to adopt, at least, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) 15%-20% budgetary allocation for education in developing nations like Nigeria.
But in the previous ten years, there has not been a single year where the national budget’s allotment to education exceeded 10% . The average has been between 5% and 6%. The unending tokenism of Government towards the education sector affirms the deliberate efforts of the ruling class to join forces with their foreign collaborators (IMF, World Bank, Brenton Woods Institutions) to stifle educational development of Nigeria and Nigerians.
Comrades and compatriots of the press, as you can see, the university’s inadequate funding is intentional.
Comrades and compatriots of the press, the university’s inadequate funding is intentional It is in tandem with the neoliberal agenda of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) which is to keep is perpetually backward and underdeveloped. No surprise our universities are in a programmatic way being transformed into superfluous entrepreneurial establishments that process bread and pure water, rather than to citadels of innovation and creativity of advance technology.
The intention is to make the country a consumer of technology rather than being a veritable player in the knowledge and technology industry ASUU rejects this in all entirety and calls on all well-meaning Nigerians to join in our crusade to force a better funding for education and universities as an agent of liberation for our people
The recent attempts by the Federal Government to turn the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) into an alternative source for regular funding of education is most uncharitable and smack of abdication of responsibilities.
TETFund, as a product of our past engagements was meant to be an intervention agency to support regular budgetary allocation to the sector.
Our Union rejects the recent use of the Fund to power the Student Loans Scheme Government should look elsewhere to get the funds for the Scheme as its action amounts to deliberate frustration of the core reasons for setting up the Fund.
6. DELIBERATE CRISIS CREATION IN SOME NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES
The Kogi State University (KSU), Anyingba, Ebonyi State University (EBSU), Abakalıkı, Lagos State Universities (LASU), Ojo, Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO), Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), Igbariam, and other universities where our members have been unjustly sacked and have had their salaries withheld for no reason are examples of the deliberate crises that have been imposed on branches across the nation.
The kind of legal system that exists in Nigeria, where justice is either thwarted or postponed, is complementary to the efforts of these naive Vice Chancellors.
Regardless of the situation, ASUU being a union of intellectuals’ will always support its members wherever and whenever they are subjected to unfair treatment.
We are also by this conference pricking the conscience of the operatives of the Judiciary to be conscious of their calling and refrain from being used by the political class to further erode the confidence of the people in the sanctity of their pronouncements
Conclusion
Nigeria is on the verge of collapse, and all of its parts are being pulled along with it by the type of leaders who control its political and administrative spheres.
It should go without saying that our great and patriotic Union will not give up even a single square inch of territory to grasshoppers that want to destroy our country whose sole objective is the cavalier accumulation of illegal wealth.
We are in a global knowledge economy where the primacy of university education is a categorical imperative.
Unfortunately, our leaders at both State and Federal levels appear to remain fossilized in stone age mentality with their anti-intellectual and parochial orientation.
If Nigeria must be great, the central role of universities cannot be over-emphasized. In other to perform its developmental mandate our public universities like their counterparts across the globe must enjoy autonomy in teaching and governance.
Furthermore, these public universities must be properly funded. Rather than proliferating universities in the country, it is no rocket science that it is far better to enhance the capacity and access of these universities and make them globally competitive.
Above all, the prevailing criminally shameful slave wages paid to academics in the country beyond being a self-indictment of our leaders and a reflection of our low premium for university education is a loud testimony to the fact that Nigeria is not ready for development.
It is a case of “what you sow, you shall reap” With the salaries that cannot take a lecturer home, we will continue to lose our best and brightest to foreign universities who knows their value, just as we make Nigerian universities unattractive for scholars across the globe.
Our Union will not fold its hands and watch politicians who prioritizes self over and above the development of Nigeria destroy our public universities.
If things continue as it is, our Union as a patriotic Union will rise powerfully in defense of the Nigerian public universities and the over-burdened and inhumanly over-taxed Nigerian people.
The Nigerian government will do well to take heed before it is too late
Solidarity Without Compromise
PROF. ADELAJA ODUKOYA ZONAL COORDINATOR
