EDUCATION-NIGERIA: University Lecturers Go on Strike

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Mar 20 2002 (IPS) - University lecturers in Nigeria have gone on strike to demand the re-instatement of their 60 colleagues who were sacked from the University of Ilorin, in central Nigeria, last year.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), a body that looks after the welfare of lecturers in the country’s 42 universities, called the five-day strike, which began on Monday.

Last week the union called on its members to boycott lectures for one week in what it described as the first phase of the struggle to re-instate the sacked lecturers.

ASUU President, Oladipo Fashina said: “In accordance with the decision of ASUU National Executive Council (NEC) of January 19, 2002, branches shall go on strike on Monday (Mar 18) to Friday (Mar 22), on account of remedying the injustice at the university of Ilorin. All chairmen of branches shall implement NEC’s directive that the strike shall be total”.

“After the strike the NEC (National Executive Council) will meet to take more drastic action. It can get worse; we don’t care about the consequences,” he said.

Concerted lobbying, including an appeal to President Olusegun Obasanjo, has failed to yield any fruit on the sacked lecturers, according to Fashina.

He said 44 of the 60 lecturers were sacked for participating in the last ASUU strike. Fashina accused the government of reneging on an agreement it reached with the union on Apr 30, 2001, in which, he said, both agreed that no university staff should be victimised for his or her role in the industrial action.

Nigeria’s 47 Polytechnics, which have been on strike since December over a 22-percent salary increase, were last week told to wait for the 2002 budget, which is yet to be passed by the National Assembly.

Remi Ibitola, of the Ministry of Education, says the lecturers “brought their proposal after the minister had submitted the supplementary budget. They were late and we told them to wait for the new budget”.

Nigerian universities have witnessed a spate of strikes for the past decade. In 1996, ASUU boycotted work over non-review of their 1992 agreement over new salary structure, academic freedom and allowances for lecturers. The strike lasted three months. Non implementation of another agreement entered between government and ASUU on May 1999 led to another strike in September that year which lasted for another three months.

Another round of strike was averted late last year by the timely intervention of the Nigeria Labour Congress and the National Universities Commission.

Muhammed Momoh, an education analyst, says ASUU went on strike 12 times last year, despite the increases in their salaries and allowances after their numerous demands to the government in 1999.

In a 53-point demand in 1999, the union sought an enhanced pay regime for its members. It demanded that the least paid university teacher should earn a basic salary of 724,000 Naira (around 7,240 U.S. dollars) annually. The highest paid lecturer, it said, should take home a basic salary of 2,903,312 Naira (around 29,000 U.S. dollars) annually.

The union also demanded an allocation of 10 U.S cents per barrel of crude oil sold per day, to the universities under a fund to be called “petroleum fund”. It also demanded that a string of property in Lagos and Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, be allocated to universities to enhance self-sustenance.

To ease their financial woes, the World Bank offered a one-billion-dollar loan to Nigeria, which the union claim would amount to the commercialisation and weakening of Nigeria’s education system.

Worried by the spate of strikes by the lecturers, the National Assembly late 2000 directed the Industrial Arbitration Panel to wade into the university crisis. At the sitting of the panel in April 2001, the union officials failed to appear.

Thomas Kangnaan, president of the National Council of Concerned Nigerian Parents (NCCNP), that was formed to protect and defend the interest of parents and their children, says parents are concerned about the uncertain future of their children.

“The instability is caused by incessant strikes by various unions, pursuing selfish agenda. The situation has forced children of the elite to seek better education in neighbouring countries. It has also resulted in increases in the cost of educating students due to incessant closures, proliferation of satellite campuses and attendant lowering of education standard,” he says.

Government says it has released over 28.4 billion Naira (2.8 billion U.S. dollars) for recurrent expenditures and 5.85 billion (about 585 million U.S. dollars) for rehabilitation of facilities and the purchase of equipment within 2001.

“This is unprecedented in the history of Nigeria. Despite the releases, what the government is getting in return for these efforts is a system that is made unstable by incessant strikes by staff unions. This is most unfortunate and sadly unpatriotic,” says Babalola Borishade, Minister of Education.

An allocation of about 18 billion Naira (180 million U.S. dollars) or six percent of the total budgetary allocation in 2001 was made to education, making it the fifth largest after the allocation to Power and Steel, Works and Housing, Water Resources and the Federal Capital Territory.

Parents have condemned the latest strike action and the confrontational attitude of lecturers in demanding justice for the sacked lecturers.

“They are now well paid and paid timely. Why must they start bringing in the issue of re-instating the sacked lecturers at Ilorin? After all, we hear that some of those sacked by the government are already on pensions. How can someone who is on pension be asking to be re-instated? He can only apply as a contract staff,” says Funke Alonge, a 40-year-old mother.

Alonge, whose first son graduated last year as a mechanical engineer, after seven years instead of five due to strikes by the lecturers, told IPS: “It is left for the university authority to employ pensioners or not. You can not compel government to employ people on contract, as there are so many unemployed qualified people all over the place”.

“I think the ASUU have taken their luck too far in their actions. They hardly do their work as they are always on strike, yet they demand all sorts of things. Government should deal with them once and for all if we are to have peace in tertiary institutions,” she said.