Thinking with You Niyi Akinnaso, niyi.tlc@gmail.com
When I was teaching Semiotics to graduate students at Temple University in Philadelphia, United States of America, I often used “The Rhetoric of the image”, a classic semiotic analysis published in 1964 by Roland Barthes, to illustrate how different messages are conveyed, usually on different levels, by a system of signs. Like the advertisement of Panzani (a brand of pasta) used in Barthes’ illustration, union strikes in Nigeria are a system of signs, each strike conveying multiple messages simultaneously.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities is by far the best known of the three major unions in Nigerian universities. The other two are the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities, representing, respectively, the senior administrative and the non-academic junior staff of the institutions.
Although these unions are better known for their industrial disputes, it is important to stress that they provide necessary checks and balances in the running of the universities, by keeping the university administrators, the Governing Councils, and the proprietors on their toes from time to time.
In performing this function, union leaders often run into conflict with university administrators, even as they express their concerns, while also offering constructive criticisms, even when there is no crisis as such. Their attempts to reach the proprietors of their institutions, namely, federal and state governments, to lodge their concerns or complaints often run into a brick wall.
In recent months, one or the other of these unions has exposed corruption on some university campuses; the lacklustre performances of some university administrators; the excesses of some university Governing Councils; and the underfunding of the universities by federal and state governments. The recent developments at the Obafemi Awolowo University; the University of Abuja; the Federal Universities of Technology at Akure and Abeokuta; and some state universities offer good illustrations.
To be sure, the unions sometimes go overboard in expressing their concerns. This is especially true of NASU, which is the largest, and often the most difficult to control, of the unions, as illustrated, for example, by its recent illegal detention of some principal officers of the Obafemi Awolowo University in their offices.
Nevertheless, it is often the prolonged indifference of the university administrators and, especially, the proprietors to the unions’ concerns that often pushes them to go on strike. Even then, they often give the administrators and proprietors some room to mend fences by starting with a “warning strike” for a given period of time.
Such is the case with ASUU’s one-week warning strike, which ends tonight. As usual, the strike has once again exposed the chronic ill-health of Nigerian universities and the growing discomfort of their academic staff. This is evident in the union’s demands, which include the non-implementation of the 2009 agreement with the Federal Government; non-payment of the Needs Assessment Intervention Fund; the reduction of the Federal Government’s budgetary allocation to education; fractional, irregular, or non-payment of salaries and other emoluments; and non-payment of arrears of 2009-2015 earned allowances.
Literally, on the surface, the demands are what they are, as stated or denoted in their messages. It is easy to read them as self-serving and ill-timed: How can university teachers be asking for huge amounts of money, given the biting economic recession gripping the country at the moment? However, those who raise such a question often forget about the huge amount of money appropriated to themselves by legislators; the huge amount of public funds invested in election campaigns; and the advertised huge amount of recovered loot.
Nevertheless, we must go beyond the denotative meaning in order to appreciate the uncoded or connotative messages in the demands. They speak to the pathological neglect of human capital development by federal and state governments, which often mouth education, without putting enough money where their mouth is. This in essence is the nucleus of the comment by Wole Olanipekun (SAN) over the weekend, despite the misleading headline by the press, which wrongly focuses on his side comment about the timing of the ASUU strike.
Hear Olanipekun: “We must not kill education. Education leads to revival; it leads to revolution, emancipation and it also leads to freedom … Education brings light. Already, education is dying in Nigeria … I want to plead with both ASUU and the government, please, come together, reason together, and urgently resolve your differences for (the sake of) our children”.
The neglect of higher education, and indeed the education sector as a whole, is evidenced by poor infrastructure and poorly equipped libraries, laboratories, and classrooms; by poorly trained and unemployable graduates; and by the abysmal rankings of Nigerian universities in Africa and the world at large, reflecting poor or low quality and inadequate research output by Nigerian university academics.
The neglect is also evidenced by delayed subventions and by the relative indifference by the Federal Government to the agreement it signed twice (2009 and 2013) with ASUU in the last seven years.
Another hidden message lurks behind the warning strike: As the language of negotiation, the warning strike is being used as an open invitation to the Federal Government to set up a negotiation table and seek a resolution in order to prevent a full blown strike. In 2013, I wrote several articles in support of ASUU’s nearly six-month strike until I thought the Federal Government had finally reached an agreement with the union. I then questioned the continuation of the strike, not realising that former President Goodluck Jonathan’s meeting with the union leaders was hardly more than window dressing. Union leaders who deal with governments have come to realise over the years that strike is about the only language that the government understands. Even then, such understanding has hardly led to any desirable action.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that a full-blown strike will further complicate an already bad situation. Students will suffer the most as they may face a truncated semester, with hurriedly arranged semester examinations even when the syllabus was not completed. It is in this sense that strikes could be viewed as contributory to students’ failure.
In order to avert a full-blown ASUU strike and its unpleasant consequences, it is important for both sides to piggyback on the gesture by the Senate to bring them to the negotiating table. Given the current financial situation of the country, it is clear that the government cannot meet all of the union’s demands. It is very important, therefore, that ASUU leaders must prioritise their demands as they go to the negotiating table.
It is also incumbent on the government to take ASUU’s demands seriously and to respect the agreement reached with the union by previous administrations. They are perpetually biding on the government, regardless of which political party is in power.
In this regard, it is very important for the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, to be heard and to be seen as participating actively in the negotiations. Similarly, the National Universities Commission must be an active participant in negotiating funding for the universities it oversees. It must play an active role as an ally of ASUU.
Finally, this, I think, is the time for the Committees of Pro- and Vice-Chancellors to step in and negotiate with the government on ASUU’s behalf. They must stop viewing ASUU as a foe but instead view it as a partner in progress. After all, the institutions they govern or lead will be the ultimate beneficiaries of ASUU’s successful negotiations with the government.
Punch
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