By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Feb 7 2003 (IPS)

Dupe Olutuye is worried that she may spend this year at home if the striking lecturers at Nigeria’s 24 universities refused to return to work.

”Someone is playing games with our future. The earlier they resolve this strike action the better,” says Olutoye.

The lecturers went on strike on Jan 30.

”The government and the striking lecturers should compromise in the interest of students. I do not want to spend six years for a four-year course,” she says.

Olutoye has received a provisional admission letter, but she does not know when she will start her university studies. ”I am anxiously waiting to go to the university,” she says.

The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) Tuesday appealed to the National Assembly in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, to intervene in the standoff between the lecturers and government so they can resume studies.

The lecturers also want the government to allocate 26 percent of the national budget to education in line with UNESCO provisions.

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, based in Paris.

For a decade, Nigeria’s public universities have witnessed disruptions to academic activities due to strikes by lecturers and non-academic staff, leading to students spending more time at home than in school. To make up for the lost time, the academic year has, sometimes, been extended by one year.

In an editorial Wednesday, the privately owned Punch newspaper called on the lecturers to return to work in the interest of students and educational system. It also cautioned the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo against the habit of entering into agreements it knows would be hard to implement.

”Though the education sector is still far from being out of the woods, the Obasanjo administration seems to be committed to the development of the sector within the available resources, but the federal government is not doing enough in carrying other stakeholders, particularly ASUU, along in its efforts to redress the deep-rooted decay in the university system,” the paper said.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), at a press conference late December, hinged its decision to embark on a nation-wide strike on what it referred to as a breach of the provisions of an agreement it entered with government in May 2001. It raised 17 issues that, it claimed, have not been sufficiently addressed by government.

They include the sacking in 2001 of 49 lecturers from the University of Ilorin, central Nigeria, and an alleged victimisation of student activists on the campus.

But government, through the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Peter Okebukola, refuted ASUU’s 17-point demand, claiming that the government has fulfilled almost all its obligations to the 2001 agreement.

Okebukola said four months after signing the agreement, government released, through the NUC – which oversees the universities – five billion naira (around 50 million U.S. dollars) for all the 24 universities.

”In October 2002, the president approved the sum of 7.2 billion naira (72 million U.S. dollars) to be spent in 2003 and 2004 for the completion of abandoned academic buildings in all 24 federal universities, inter-university centres and NUC.

”There is no doubt that the education sector alongside other sectors of the Nigerian economy suffered a long period of neglect especially during prolonged military rule. This neglect induced deep-seated decay in the system, which now requires huge injection of funds to correct,” Okebukola said.

He said, beginning from 1999, the government instituted a regime of progressive increase in the release of funds to education. For example, in the 2003 budget, 29 percent of the national budget has been allocated to education, he said.

Oladapo Fasina, ASUU President, Wednesday predicted a long period of standoff with government, as officials were threatening to stop lecturers’ salaries.

The Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals and Research Institutes have also threatened to go on strike if government ignored them.

”Meeting ASUU in isolation on conditions of service will run contrary to the intention of the founding fathers of the academic union. The federal government should extend the gesture to all members in the interest of industrial peace,” the Senior Staff Association of Universities said in a statement, made available to IPS, this week.

Reports from some universities, indicate that students have not been taught for six months, while final-year students, who wrote their examination in August, are unable to take part in the mandatory National Youth Service Corps programme as their examination results are being withheld by striking lecturers.

”My two sons have not gone back to university because the ASUU strike started while they were still on holidays,” says Debo Otitoju, who lives in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.

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