ASUU-NASU and other NUTs strike out

Does that title sound more like Greek or gibberish to you? Either way, welcome to Nigerian education, where a child is sent to school to get an education but somehow usually ends up getting just a certificate and fails to get work after he or she gets the third degree during a job interview.

Before I move on to the meat of this post, let me just explain to you that ASUU is the rather quirky misnomer of an acronym for the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities, NASU stands for the Non-Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities, while NUT represents the alphabet soup for the National Union of Nigerian Teachers.

Strangely enough, the three unions are actually also Senior staff Associations, which include management level staff members!

The NUT, of course, is the umbrella body for non-tertiary institutional teachers. At the local government level, their specialty is abandoning their pupils in class every so often and heading off to their farms for food or farm work, ostensibly because of low pay, even though most collect huge sums annually from illegal levies and withheld operating funds rabbited away somewhere on and off!

That is among the reasons why only twenty-five per cent of the secondary school students who sat for this year's West African School Certificate examination obtained at least a pass in five subjects at the baccalaureate level - not for lack of reading!

I will go right to the beginning of the strike action phenomenon in the Nigerian educational sector. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with going on strike in order to claim your right to proper and adequate wages; after all, even British postal workers - normally categorized under the essential duty job group - are threatening to go on strike soon.

However, there are differences. The British and others do it rarely and usually for more noble reasons. I cannot say the same thing for my country men, unfortunately.

For those saying that the strike is not all about money, let me refresh your memory just a little bit. 

Recall that I have said nothing about the continued sale of handouts to students – even in state owned institutions of higher learning. 

I have said nothing yet about those lecturers who get outside contract jobs and use publicly funded equipment to complete the accompanying tests, designs and/or fabrications. 

And, neither have I said that the most likely reason for the hue and cry about obsolete equipment and dilapidated structures – that has become the stock in trade of the professional lecture room unionists – is that the style of their personal business has now been cramped by inadequate facilities.

In relation to that last observation, some lecturers have been clocked several times in a week shuttling from one city airport to the other in search or fulfillment of one contract or the other - usually booking the first or last flights in and out.

Makes you wonder where the money comes from and when they actually find time to teach - including the time to supervise estate development project worthy of any self-respecting high rolling and free wheeling non-civil servant.

Why do I say that? In 1988, when I returned to Nigeria from abroad, there were no strikes in the academic sector: inflation was not choking mainly because a liter of petrol was only seventy kobo and the lecturers, as well as everybody else, were scared stiff of the gun-toting fatigued military men in power then.

Then, ex-president Babangida jacked up the price of a liter of petrol to seven Naira! All hell broke loose. The cost of transportation, food, and living generally shot through the roof.

I remember that a junior worker in my textile company then earned a princely ninety Naira on so monthly, a senior staff found five hundred to be adequate monthly.

I was paid about double that last figure and an experienced Engineer in a good oil company got about fifty per cent more as his or her take home pay after some deductibles had been extricated at source.

A university lecturer was at the time earning less than a senior staff in a textile factory. Then, the envy and greed began.

I had university lecturers as neighbors then, so I know what I am talking about. One professor wondered aloud why they, as the 'greatest' brains in the country, should not be earning more than the oil workers, especially they taught them in school!

Do you see a flaw in that pattern of reasoning? Anyway, they went on strike the first time and succeeded in wringing a wage increment from the federal government, emboldened by the unimaginable realization that Babangida's annulment of Abiola's June 12 mandate caused such an uproar that even the military did not use force to crack down on the pro-democracy NADECO protesters.

Then the NASU took their own turn, after all, many of them had the same qualifications as the ASUU members but chose instead to serve the university in an administrative capacity!

They, too, succeeded in forcing a pay raise - as did the NLC and the other plethora of labor unions and associations, who now saw strike actions as a veritable tool to beat a path to their own share of the Niger Delta's oil wealth - the same dividends sadly denied to the indigenes of the oil producing areas since independence and before.

The list here gives an idea of the tic-tac-toe nature of the subsequent ASUU assault on Nigerian education.

Have I said anything about donated or newly acquired books destined for the school library ending up on the private bookshelves of some lecturers - with no trace of who signed them out or when the books were taken out?

And, if you think that the recent cash-for-doctorate-degree scandal in Germany was something, the Nigerian university system version adds flesh to the lurid details - yes, in cash or in kind, or no degree or certificate insight!

Some students have been known to collect their masters degrees without being able to find or locate their bachelors degree results or certificates - that's just how mean and unprofessional these campus administration guys can be.

It was also around this time in the now-megalomaniacal ASUU history that many campus lecturers became veritably manifest serial rapists of their students. Abdulkareem's hit music video "Mr. Lecturer" tells it like it was in this depraved era of Nigerian history.

Some of them even had the gall to call it one of their academic privileges, in lieu of better pay - and even when they finally hit pay dirt, most remained unchanged but moved to carry on their wayward ways!

A few of the more notorious but repentant lecturers have redeemed themselves even risen to occupy the hallowed position of the vice-chancellor - by hook or by crook.

I am not pontificating. I just think that those in the proverbial ivory tower should be careful about the image they present to the future leaders of tomorrow.

One old and shameless professor and ex-dean in the faculty of humanities was summarily sacked in an unprecedented move by the government for the 'betterment' of Nigerian education - a female student set him up and everything was documented and recorded by the law enforcement agents.

That certainly cooled the randy ardor of some of the other like-minded campus molesters, who routinely gave 9:00 PM office appointments to failing or targeted female students who were desirous of a passing grade - often rejecting cash offers from the more beautiful targeted victims.

When the state governments created more state universities to cater for students who wished to avoid the strike prone federal universities, ASUU came calling and conscripted the lecturers there into their fold - so that it would be seen as a nationwide phenomenon, since even the non-participants benefited from the results of ASUU's wage negotiation triumphs.

Up to date, I dare say that the lecturers in the private universities earn well and have resisted joining the fray - actually, I think they have no reason to, yet.

The kind of arrogance displayed by the ASUU leadership can be shocking, to say the least.

The current ASUU president teaches landscape architecture in a state owned university and recently, in a newspaper interview, dared the state governor to sack him for prolonging the current already-two-months-plus long strike - and still counting!

How can somebody get paid for doing no work? That is exactly what all the crazy alphabet soup unions have been doing for years?

They all get bulk payment in arrears after each striking AWOL! No wonder they love to strike and prefer dueling with equally incompetent government negotiators.

According to the relatively erudite professor, he was doing the nation a favor by lecturing students because he was the only professor in landscape architecture in the whole country!

Really! So, he has been unable to train anybody else to the 'Ph.D' level in the last decade or two? That speaks volumes, if you ask me.

My sister is a lecturer. She is reasonable. Yes, she sees my point of view. She agrees that an oil company executive should earn more than a classroom teacher.

I had asked her, at the beginning of this latest dropping of the chalk and duster, "What exactly is it that a university lecturer does so well that he or she should hope to earn far more than an executive director in a blue chip company whose duties include overseeing divisional corporate functions in branches located in many towns and cities in every state across the nation?"

Every university vice-chancellor was once a lecturer but, once he or she gets 'elected' into that position by his or her peers, he or she will earn a whopping two million Naira - that is about two-thirds of the US federal poverty level but is actually in the millionaire level in Nigeria - per month throughout his or her tenure, while a head of department is permitted to corner all funds accruing to the department and use same for his or her personal pleasure for the two-year tenure without external interference or probing!

I hate and shudder to think of the secret powers possessed by a dean of a faculty! Meanwhile, the students spend seven years in school for a four-year degree program.

How does a job seeker explain that gap in his education on his curriculum vitae? This post is for such poor and hapless students, many of who lose even more financially as their off-campus accommodation payment in advance is not refunded by the landlord.

Room and board pre-paid for double-time in school? Terrible, just terrible....President Yar'Adua of Nigeria visited Saudi Arabia by special invitation recently during the opening of a new university over there.

Some literary and uncouth tongues wagged and waxed poetic about the fire on the mountain at home and abroad.

They wondered why our universities should be shut due to strike action, while others wailed about our president being absent at the UN building in New York City, where Obama harped to other African leaders about global warming and climate change!

I will defend this current Nigerian President any day. Nobody can accuse him of being corrupt!

Unknown to probably many people, the Saudi King told our president that his new university hired the best lecturers from around the world - unlike many of our lazy and mentally inbred lot, who revel in conjuring scores for cash and making score sheets disappear at will whenever a student chooses to toe the path of honesty and hard-work.

I remember the time - decades ago - when our government hired Indian science teachers for secondary schools. the one we got was so good that the lowest score in Chemistry was a humbling 93% and the highest was 97% - we were about 32 students per class then!

Our dear Yar'Adua probably snubbed Obama right back by not heading off to New York - it's not every day that the Saudi King invites you to be a guest at an event in his kingdom you know.

Anyway, what has global warming got to do with us, when almost all our industrial establishments have been rendered comatose by the absence of reliable power supply and a conducive competitive and operating environment, save for the gas-flaring oil industry? Ha-ha....