When will the ongoing Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)strike end? This is the question being asked as the government and the varsity teachers seek a way around the perennial crisis. The government’s negotiation team is proposing scholarship and Education Bank as means of funding universities, but ASUU has other ideas. KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE reports.
Since November 5, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been on strike.
It said it was a resumption of the strike it suspended in September last year over the government’s failure to fulfil terms of the 2009 Agreement and subsequent Memoranda of Action (MoA). The MoA implementation was to infuse N200 billion yearly into universities to revitalise their facilities.
The strike started when talks between ASUU and the government negotiation team, headed by Dr Wale Babalakin, broke down.
While ASUU faulted the government’s failure to implement its proposal on alternative sources through which the government could fund the university system, the government negotiation team argued that government funding was not sustainable and proposed an Education Bank that can give students loans.
Negotiation team’s position
Babalakin has said the team had the blessing of the National Council on Education – the highest decision making body in Nigeria regarding education policy – to introduce a student loan scheme.
“The National Council on Education has directed that student loan schemes be set up by the various state governments. It has also supported the idea of an education bank, which would provide soft loans for students seeking to obtain university education,” said Babalakin.
Babalakin and other members of the team – Prof Olufemi Bamiro, Prof Nimi Briggs, Mr Lawrence Mgbale and Prof Munzali Jibrin – said the Federal Government could not afford to provide the N1 trillion the union was demanding for the university system yearly as it would have little to spend on other national needs.
“Should the Federal Government make available the sum of N1trillion every year to fund University Education, which is equal to 70 per cent of the total capital released for 2017, which was N1.3b? In our opinion, this is not realistic in a country that has other competing needs such as infrastructure, defence, security, health and other needs that require government’s urgent attention,” the negotiation team said.
Currently, Babalakin said the government was only able to fund 22.5 per cent of university needs and proposed a more sustainable method of funding.
The negotiation team is proposing an increment in the number of scholarships available to university students such that 30 per cent of students can attend school on various kinds of scholarships. For the remaining 70 per cent, the team proposed that the Education Bank could provide an annual loan of N1 million to the students to cover fees and other costs.
“Our position is that every student, who gains admission to a University and is not able to qualify on merit for the Federal Government’s scholarship should be entitled, as of right, to obtain a loan from the Education Bank. A loan of N1 million per annum would be made available to each of such students. N700,000 (seven hundred thousand naira) out of this loan will be paid to the University as tuition fees while the balance will be available to the student as support towards his upkeep allowances,” he said.
In repaying the loan, the team proposed for the students to pay back not more than 10 per cent of their income with an interest of five per cent within a given period.
“The loan from the Education Bank is a right for all those, who are qualified and who apply for it. It will be provided at an interest rate of no more than five per cent per annum to enable the Bank cover the cost of administering the loan.
“The loan will be structured in a manner that the student borrower will not expend more than 10 per cent of his income in repaying the loan over a given period,” the team said.
ASUU’s position
Reacting to the negotiation team’s proposal, ASUU President Prof Biodun Ogunyemi told The Nation that the Education Bank was a means to introduce tuition fees into public schools and further pauperise the people. He said Education Bank had been experimented in Nigeria in the past, but did not work, saying the same fate would befall the new proposal. He also expressed concern that even after graduating, using students’ loans, the high unemployment rate could make it difficult for students to repay the loans.
He said: “ASUU does not agree on education bank. It was tried before in Nigeria for seven years – from 1993 to 2001 and it failed because of corruption and government’s failure to live up to its expectation. The bank was forced to close down.”
Ogunyemi faulted Babalakin’s claim that the team was not proposing tuition hike, saying the education bank is being proposed to allow it.
“We heard the chairman of the negotiation team said they are not proposing tuition fees. When he said they should introduce Education Bank to give out N1 million out of which the students would pay N700,000 on tuition, is that not it?
“We see that as a trap because the bank will collapse; and after that, they would have introduced tuition fees, which once started would become difficult to stop. It is a debt trap for our students. They should resist it. After they graduate, where are the jobs they will get to repay the loan?”
On the contrary, ASUU boss believed if the Federal Government would implement its funding proposal, which he said was prepared by a plural team of government (including the Accountant-General of the Federation; Federal Ministry of Education; National Universities Commission and ASUU officials), the university system would be better funded.
“In the proposal we gave the negotiation team, we listed other sources the government could use to fund education. We told the government to block leakages through corruption.
“There are some agencies and parastatals whose funds could be harnessed for education. These agencies have corporate social funds that are not declared. They call it cash cow in government circles – their budgets are not made public – agencies like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN); the NNPC, NDIC, and even NIPOST, which was estimated to have made N5 billion from Stamp Duties alone. But the government refused to implement this. If we did all of these and we agreed after we presented the report in 2017, why would government not implement the report?”
When asked why Nigerian universities could not raise funds like renowned universities of the world that do not depend on government funding, Ogunyemi said it boiled down to proper funding of the institutions to carry out cutting-edge research, which Nigerian universities lacked the capacity to do.
“The universities you talk about are able to carry out cutting edge research. It is through research that they get patents and make money – not selling pure water, or baking bread and cake – that is not the business of the university. Before we can get to that level, the government must invest in the universities. Go to our laboratories, there are no equipment; go to our libraries, there are no books,” he said.
Ogunyemi said it was not lack of capacity on the part of Nigerian academics, but poor work environment which did not promote research.
“We have the capacity. That is why you see Nigerian lecturers go abroad and excel. But back home, we do not have the enabling environment. When you look at the areas Nigerian academics are making exploits, it is usually in the literary areas and not fields that require cutting edge research,” he said.
Even with limited resources in Nigeria, Ogunyemi said universities would have been able to generate more funds from research if only the government would make use of their experts in implementing contracts.
“All the contracts the government is implementing we have experts in the university, we have consultancy services that can do them. But the government will not do so because the universities will not pay kickbacks to politicians from the contracts,” he said.
Ogunyemi added that ASUU had advised the Federal Government to give its abandoned properties in Lagos to universities to generate income, but met a brickwall.
“We told them to hand over all those properties in Lagos that were abandoned when the government moved to Abuja, but they did not. Many of the properties are rotting away,” he said.
Ogunyemi said ASUU’s refusal to be silenced had helped universities to still remain afloat. “If we fail and say let us give up like primary and secondary school teachers, probably public universiites would be worse than they are now. We are doing this for our students – because of their future – so there will be universities in their time,” he said.
When will this empasse between the government and ASUU be resolved? This is the question students, forced to stay outside the classroom because of the strike are asking.
As for Oluwatobi Junaid, a 400-Level Mass Communication student from Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, a quick resolution of the crisis is all she wants as she does not believe there is anything to gain from lengthy strikes.
“The strike is causing us to slow down. This week, I was to see my supervisor for my project, but could not because of the strike. When the money is released, we don’t see the effect. The ICT centre (funded by special intervention fund), which they have been building since I got into this school is still under construction; it has not been completed,” she said.
