This article, which was first published in my column on 11th October 2022 and subsequently on several traditional and online platforms, merits being repeated because President Bola Ahmed Tinubu through his signing into law the Student Loan (Access to Higher Education) Bill, has, once again, acted like a knight in shining armour galloping into town on a horse back to rescue the weak, which in this instance, are the indigent students that abound in our country and have been crying out for help.
It is clearly a democracy day gift to the nation as the incredibly useful bill was signed into law on June 12.
As the title reveals, the piece being referenced was written in the heat of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, strike that had literally crippled education in Nigeria for some eight (8) months—February to October 2022.
And it is quite gratifying that then-presidential candidate and incumbent President of Nigeria, Asiwaju Tinubu and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, now Chief of Staff, CoS, to the President, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, had a similar conviction to the case that l made in the piece about the provision of loans to students to enable them to pay market rates as fees to higher institutions as the panacea to the constant industrial actions often being embarked upon by academics, which often stem from poor remuneration and non-conducive working environment.
But, l had no way of knowing that both of them were privately praying and working assiduously for Asiwaju Tinubu to become the next president of Nigeria in order to actualise the bold recommendations, which have the capacity to solve the perennial issue of lecturers embarking on industrial actions to the detriment of our youths and future of the education sector of our country in general.
In writing the piece, one was convinced that the solution to the incessant ASUU strikes would be a paradigm shift in the ways and means of funding the education sector in Nigeria and the student loan approach held out itself as the most attractive.
That is why the case was forcefully made in the essay, which one is craving the indulgence of readers to reproduce nearly nine months after the 11th October 2022 date that it was first published in the mass media, simply because it would help breakdown, explain, or throw some light on the reasoning behind the decision of the CoS (in his capacity as a legislator) to promote the very consequential bill and why Mr President signed it into law, less than two (2) weeks of mounting the saddle of leadership of our beloved country.
It is the second of the two very consequential bills rapidly signed into law in the first ten (10) days of being in the driver’s seat in Aso Rock Villa seat of presidential power in what promises to be a rollercoaster ride in political leadership, and the sort of which has never been witnessed in our clime.
Before getting to the nitty gritty of the article, perhaps it would help if l point out that it was Mr Gbajabiamila, in his capacity as the Speaker of the 9th House of Assembly, that negotiated with ASUU the end of the obnoxious and highly embarrassing strike action that lasted for 8 months during which both Education and Labor Ministers adopted dog-in-a-manger attitude while our youths were pinning away outside the classrooms and being exposed to criminality owing to idleness.
And it is also instructive to note that perhaps because President Tinubu is a beneficiary of student loans during his sojourn in the United States of America where the student loan scheme is entrenched, he literally could not wait for the ink used in signing his signature on the document conferring on him the Presidency of Nigeria to dry, before using it to append his signature on the Student Loan Bill.
Having been a benefactor of student loans as captured in his profile, which indicates that he attended Richard J. Daley College, which is a public institution in the state of Chicago, Illinois, USA, it was easy for President Tinubu to empathise and connect with indigent university students in Nigeria and align with them by opening up the opportunity for higher education for them so that our country can become a net exporter of high-quality human capital around the world as India currently does, hence its nationals are the Chief Executive Officers, CEOs, and Chief Technical Officers, CTOs, of top 10 Fortune 500 firms in the world.
As the stage has been set for the discourse with the forgoing background narrative, without further ado, l hereby present below a complete reproduction of the piece detailing the issues and constraints in the education sector, which President Tinubu addressed by accenting to the bill, which is now law:
“The judiciary, which is vested with the authority to interpret the laws of our country, has spoken on the industrial action embarked upon by tertiary institutions lecturers in Nigeria since February 14 this year.
In its ruling on Wednesday, September 21, it was held that the striking lecturers must return to the classrooms.
But, that verdict had only helped to galvanize the resolve of the discontented lecturers to further dig in their heels.
So, the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) in Abuja, which ordered ASUU members back to work in discontinuation of its industrial action might have done its job but it is a no-brainer for most people to realise that it is a case of barking without being able to bite.
It is, therefore, such a welcome relief that on Wednesday, 5th October 2022, the Appeal court acted wisely by directing the parties to settle the feud out of court.
I have a hunch that the Appeal court judges might have hinged their decision to recommend out-of-court settlement as the best-suited option for resolving the conflict based on the dictum that we are all familiar with: ‘You can force the horse to the river, but you can not force it to drink’. This implies that getting teachers back to work should be done by persuasion, not coercion.
It makes one wonder why the Federal Government of Nigeria, FGN, took the option of going to court in the first instance.
And somehow, in light of the wisdom not to try the case by the Appeal Court judges, who rather urged the litigants to resolve their dispute amicably outside the court system, the judicial arm of government can be said to be more sensitive to the plight of our youths, who have been out of school for over seven (7) months than the executive arm of government that has failed to settle their differences with the striking teachers hence our youths, the leaders of tomorrow, have literally been left in the cold and at the mercy of nefarious ambassadors – criminal elements such as bandits and terrorists.
Having failed to succeed in trying to use the court system, the trick of divide and rule in conflict resolution appears to be a tactic, which the FGN seems to have decided to apply via the registration of labour associations formed by breakaway ASUU members, who have decided to form their own unions.
Despite the treachery, the spirit of ASUU members appears to have remained upbeat as reflected by their decision not to back down despite the odds being stacked against them.
It is a development, which all well-meaning Nigerians should be concerned about because both sides of the feuding parties seem to be set for a fight to finish without giving serious consideration to the long-term implications of the industrial action by the lecturers, which may extend beyond the more or less six (6) months remaining life span of the incumbent administration.
And in a situation whereby the no-work- no-pay rule aimed at igniting the fear of hunger and starvation as a tool for getting the aggrieved lecturers back to the classrooms has failed to resolve the conflict and the gambit of going to court to compel the lecturers to return to the classroom, which is not an amicable solution by any stretch of the imagination is also proving to be ineffective, how would the latest antic of sponsoring factions within ASUU to rebel and weaken it be the panacea to the dispute?
The underlying reason for the poser above is that having gone this far in the strike action, (7 months and counting) the aggrieved lecturers must have adopted the strategy of no retreat, no surrender in this strike action that is turning out to be an epic battle of their professional lives.
So, I would argue that seeking an end to the crisis in the education sector via a court judgement or sponsoring rebellion via fractionalisation of ASUU (straight out of the playbook of typical politicians, who are wont to divide and rule) is detestable.
In fact, the court judgement is turning out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the FGN simply because the Appeal Court had demurred from deliberating on the matter perhaps because it considers the court forum as inauspicious for the resolution of such a delicate dispute, which has more moral content than legal ground.
Even if the judgement were to have been sustained at the Appeal Court level, we are all familiar with what would potentially be the output of an unmotivated workforce, which the lecturers would be if FGN had succeeded in using the courts to hound them back to the classrooms.
Personally, l am appalled that after it had seemed to me that the government might have concluded that it is unwise to continue with the dogfight with lecturers, hence it rescinded its earlier decision to coerce the striking lecturers back to the classrooms via the memo from the National Universities Commission, NUC, directing Vice-Chancellors to re-open the institutions, the standoff has persisted.
And given the recent registration of rival associations in the academia, and the rhetorics from Labor Minister, Chris Ngige, my initial thoughts seem to be too presumptuous.
Before the most recent development, it did not surprise me that ASUU President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, in a television interview after the court verdict ordering the lecturers back to the classrooms, expressed the sentiment below:
“It’s a catastrophe. No country thinking about the future of its children, thinking about the health of its educational system, who believe in education and whose children are in those universities, will try that.”
The ASUU President’s assessment of the government’s action and the court verdict is quite scathing and damning, to say the least.
Assuming our leaders prefer to easily forget the brain drain that happened in the healthcare sector, which saw our best doctors and nurses migrating abroad where the pay is better and standard of living is higher, we the citizens that are bearing the brunt are frightened and can not afford to erase the memory of the exodus of our medical experts abroad, and fear that we may not survive a similar drain in the education sector. Therefore, we urge the authorities to thread with caution, so that our education sector, which was top-notch in not too distant past, but now in shambles, does not tip over.
To be clear, l am not absolving ASUU of blame, but only imploring FGN to place the issues squarely on the table for ASUU to appreciate the futility of hoping that the old ways of funding education are sustainable and then propose a new pathway out of the quagmire in a manner that ASUU members would have confidence and even find ways to reason together with the FGN on the way forward.
After all, it was out of the ashes of the ASUU strike that the Education Trust Fund, TetFund, – a critical source of funding support for higher education arose via creative thinking by the eggheads.
Before proceeding further and putting the issues being contended into context, it is appropriate that we take a cursory look at the relief that the FGN went to seek in court.
Basically, FG prayed for the order of court for ASUU to call off its seven-month-old strike and it is further asking the court to determine the extent of ASUU’s demands since the 2020 Memorandum of Action (MOA) that the union signed with the government.
These include the funding for the revitalisation of public universities as per the 2009 agreement, Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) payments, state universities’ proliferation and constitution of visitation panels and the release of a white paper on the report of the visitation panels.
Also included is the reconstitution of the government renegotiation team for renegotiation of the 2009 agreement, which was renegotiated in 2013/2014, due for renegotiation in 2018/2019 and the migration of ASUU members from IPPIS to its own UTAS, which is currently on test at NITDA.
The intention of the FGN appears to me as if it wants an order of the court for ASUU members to resume work in their various universities while the issues in dispute are being addressed by the NICN, which is in consonance with the provisions of Section 18 (I) (b) of the TDA Cap T8. LFN 2004.
Now that the FG has had its way, at least, in the lower court, and as earlier stated, even if the Appeal Court were to sustain the judgement and the Supreme Court also had affirmed it, would the FGN be able to fulfil its part of the bargain, which is basically about funding the education sector?
I think not, simply because the FGN is broke and can not afford to continue to bear the burden of the high cost of university education.
As such, the earlier FGN admits that reality, the better for the distressed education sector in particular and the nation in general.
Even the blind can tell that our country is currently in financial dire straits and therefore, anaemic as its life-blood-crude oil is being illegally sapped from the pipelines by oil theft cartels.
And it would not be lost on any discernible observer that the FGN is inclined to, once again, as it had been doing since 2009, literally ‘kick the can down the Road’ as Americans like to describe postponing the evil day in the manner that the removal of petrol subsidy has also been postponed to June 2023, which is a couple of days after the end of the tenure of the incumbent regime.
Why not confront the demon hobbling the education sector in Nigeria right now, once and for all by facing up to the reality that the challenge can not be wished away or be eliminated by sheer intimidation of lecturers via weaponisation of their welfare with the no-work,no-pay policy, procurement of court judgement against them and the deployment of divide and rule tactics via sponsoring of rival labour unions such as Congress of Nigerian University Academics, CONUA, and Nigerian Association of Medical and Dental Academics, NAMDA, both of which are newly registered trade associations in the academia?
At the risk of appearing to be holding brief for ASUU, but without being told, these are unwholesome and treacherous practices that would bode ill will for the education sector.
That is because although the strategy of splintering ASUU may appear to be efficacious in the short term, in the long run, the authorities may inadvertently make the education sector become too unionised with grave consequences for the future of education.
With the latest action, it appears as if the government would stop at nothing to compel the agitating academicians to go back to the classroom.
Arising from the above, it is not out of order to wonder if the option of FGN going to court and securing judgement in its favour fails to compel lecturers to go back to work, and the divide-and-rule tactic is also unable to yield the desired outcome, would the authority’s last resort be to arrest and jail the leaders of the strike action as it allegedly did with top members of the judiciary when they were not dancing to its tune?
We are all too familiar with how the Executive Arm of Government applies such an arm-twisting and undemocratic approach to impose its desire on other arms.
Hopefully, the situation may not be allowed to degenerate to such a bizarre level again, particularly because the country is now in election mode, which presupposes that the electorate is to be wooed via a charm offensive unleashed by politicians, and not being clobbered in the head by security agencies, which is what any attempt to arrest the striking lecturers and lock them up based on trumped up charges, would look like.
While I have no idea if the ruling party is imagining how devastating protest votes in the 2023 elections by aggrieved lecturers and students against the ruling party’s presidential candidate and seekers of other offices would be, l can see the APC paying dearly at the polls in February and March next year if the ASUU, FGN and students impasse is allowed to degenerate beyond the current situation.
Dwelling further on the possibility of applying brute force to rein in the lecturers if they fail to comply with the court ruling, it may be recalled that a handful of members of the top echelon of the judiciary, who were not compliant with the desire of the government back in October 2016 were arrested in the middle of the night in Gestapo style, even as some were taken away in their pyjamas by security agents, ostensibly on corruption charges, which were justified with the cache of cash in local and foreign currencies found in their homes when they were raided.
After that ugly incident, the judiciary became mired in the doghouse until a recent change in the leadership, which was forced by a rare action of Supreme Court judges writing a vicious and scandalous petition to the government against their colleague, then Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, which was leaked to the media.
Of course, the media seized upon it and created a firestorm in the society, particularly the judicial sector, via a media blitz that resulted in the change of guard in the leadership of the judiciary.
With the replacement of the embattled CJN with the incumbent in an uncanny way, the judiciary has started healing itself following the confirmation of Justice Olukayode Ariwoola by the Senate of the National Assembly, NASS, on September 21, 2022, as the new CJN.
And it would not be out of order to expect a reset in that arm of government from being pliable and compromised to being impartial so that it would remain the bastion of democracy and the proverbial last hope for the common man that it is meant to be.
By the same token, the aggrieved lecturers turned activists in the education sector may be treading a similar path or adopting a strategy akin to the one applied by the senior members of the judiciary with the hope that the authorities would (in American lingo) ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ by realising that ASUU members have taken their destiny into their hands with the determination to make this strike the industrial action that would trigger a chain reaction that could turn the sector around for good.
Presumably, if adequate care is not taken, and the current malaise in the sector is allowed to persist by not implementing the robust and far-reaching solutions encapsulated in the 2009 agreement, which have been put in abeyance to date, the current afflictions of the education sector may attain a point of no return.
And it may very well be the final death knell to the future of higher education in Nigeria for our youths whose destinies have invariably been put in the coffin (via the 7 months old shutdown of schools) and only waiting to be nailed.
It bears repeating that without a change in the FGN approach to funding higher education, the coffin of ignorance and illiteracy with Nigerian youths as victims would be nailed via the ongoing skulduggery being perpetuated by the government that should be laser-focused on putting the future of our children on even keel for a leap forward as Lee Kuan Yew, the iconic leader of Singapore, did with his tiny island country, which grew from third to first world in an unprecedentedly short period by implementing out-of-the-box policies that seemed like they were impossibilities to lesser mortals, but which became manifest through the dexterity and astuteness of its illustrious leader with a can-do spirit.
It is certainly not rocket science to figure out that our children, who are by nature, leaders of tomorrow, should be armed or equipped with the best education possible and cutting-edge knowledge that is in tune with the 21st-century developments in order for our country to be able to compete in the world that is increasingly becoming more knowledge-based and less natural resources dependent.
For instance, it is universally acknowledged that in another two decades or so, most countries in the industrialised world would ban the use of fossil fuel to power their vehicles as they are intent on transiting to rely solely on electric vehicles.
As a matter of fact, the state of California in USA, which is a major producer of crude oil, intends to ban fossil fuel-powered vehicles in the next ten (10) years.
The change from fossil fuel to electric-powered vehicles, for instance, would handicap our country whose main source of foreign exchange earnings (about 85%) is from fossil fuel crude oil.
To be ready for the future, ideally, we should by now be planning to harness our next biggest and best asset, which is the abundant human capital that our youths represent when they are facilitated to study in higher institutions of learning such as universities to enrich themselves with knowledge and skills that can be deployed all over the world where they are in demand.
India currently benefits from its highly educated workforce by virtue of their presence all over the world where they are engaged as leaders of the top ten Fortune 500 corporations worldwide.
So, our youths being out of school for so long is a liability and burden on society of which we all as Nigerians would bear the dire consequences of breeding criminals instead of scientists, mathematicians, software and robotic engineers, medical doctors, nurses, lawyers etc, which is in tandem with the wisecrack – ‘an idle mind is the devil’s workshop’.
It is dismaying that instead of preparing our youths for future leadership with sound education to stand our country in good stead in the comity of nations, the authorities in charge of education are hobbling the sector with visionless policies that are capable of worsening the level of incapacitation of our youths, which could result in cancelling out our country from the league of developing nations.
In light of the danger posed to the future of our country by a protracted shutdown of higher institutions, why not invest some of the income from the sale of fossil fuel towards the development of the next best asset in which our country has a comparative advantage, which is Human Resources that are currently largely unharnessed?
Leveraging the aphorism, ‘make haste while the sun shines’, it would be wise to seamlessly transition from oil wealth to human capital wealth if we train our youths to become highly marketable by right-tooling them.
It is doubtless that with innovative and dynamic leadership, our abundant Human Resources could be converted into cutting-edge human capital. And that is if we equip our youths with a top-notch education in order to be fit for the future or future-ready.
It is heartbreaking that it would appear as if after engaging the aggrieved lecturers in an unnecessary dogfight in the past seven (7) months with our youths as the main victims, the scales are yet to fall from the eyes of the administrators in the education space about the folly of not being in a haste to end the stand-off.
How long would Nigeria’s education sector remain in the doldrums before there is an adult in the room?
Does the incumbent FGN not have limits to how low the level of underdevelopment that it would blindly drag our beloved country into?
The FGN must come to terms with the reality that even if the lecturers appear to be fighting for their welfare, they are equally engaging in the struggle to secure the future of our beloved nation by literally poking the authorities in the rib via a strike action with a view to waking her up from the deep slumber that it is in currently, so that it could hopefully see that our country’s education sector is headed for the precipice (it could crash and the ship of education could get wrecked) if the authorities do not change course and its bellicose and the devil-may-care attitude being jettisoned, sooner than later.
Perhaps, after the filibustering by both sides, the cause of the lecturers, who have been blackmailed, bullied and maligned would eventually be recognised and addressed by the government that had been deaf and dumb in the past (7) months that the industrial action has lasted.
And one would have thought that nerves are calming on the government’s side of the divide due to the intervention by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila and his team, who recently engaged with ASUU leadership and pleaded with it to await his consultation with the President when he returns from the recently concluded United Nations General Assembly, UNGA, meeting in New York, USA.
But, contrary to my high expectations, those at the helm of affairs in the education sector and labour authorities seem to have been determined to continue to be in a dog-in-the-manger mode.
And the signs that the ice between ASUU and education authorities might have been thawing reflected by the recent retraction of the order by the government via the Nigerian Universities Commission, NUC, for lecturers to go back to the classroom, have turned out to be a mere mirage as FGN has maintained its hard stance, which is akin to chasing a bull into a China shop with disastrous consequences.
It is disappointing that a real end to the fiasco in the education sector, which one had thought is imminent due to NASS intervention may not happen after all as the report that it has just been presented to President Buhari last Wednesday, would in all likelihood, be a mere palliative measure.
The assertion above is underscored by the belief that it may not deal with the fundamental challenges besetting the education sector in ways that the crises would not reoccur soon after.
To restore the lost glory in the education sector, more fundamental actions that go beyond the treatment of the symptoms rather than the disease must be taken.
In my previous media intervention on the strike action titled “ASUU Strike: Lessons From Averted Train Workers Strike In USA”, published in both social and traditional media platforms on September 20, 2022, l made a case that the government is overburdened and is obviously unable to sustain funding university education.
But, the FGN has continued to fail to tell itself the truth since 2009 when it entered into the contentious agreement with ASUU that it knows it would be unable to fulfil and which is one of the recurring bones of contention in the current seven (7) months old strike.
Recently, the Chairman of the Committee on Finance in the red chamber, Senator Solomon Olamilekan, affirmed the incapacity of the government to sustain funding higher education when he made the enlightening revelation during the Committee’s recent interactive session with revenue-generating agencies of the Federal Government by lamenting that the university system generates between 15-16 billion naira annually, which it spends, yet the Federal Government pays lecturers salaries and also provides funds for other recurrent and capital expenditures.
With a Federal Government’s budget deficit estimated to be in the region of eleven (11) trillion naira and a very high debt-to-GDP ratio of 20.6 percent as of March this year, one needs not to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the FG, which is unable to pay civil servants without recourse to bank loans, would not be able to continue to carry the burden of paying salaries to lecturers.
One significant point in Senator Olamilekan’s observation that struck me is that universities generate as much as N15-16b, which they spend based on their whims and caprices. It suggests that the Vice-Chancellors of Universities and the Governing Councils may be complicit in the rot in the tertiary education sector.
And he emphasised that the FGN can no longer afford to take responsibility for the wages of university lecturers, which is in harmony with my proposition that students should be granted loans to pay their fees.
So, I wonder if the FGN team involved in the process of resolving the labour crises in the education sector took notice of the revelation.
Why must the FGN continue to bear the burden of paying lecturers, which is recurrent expenditure and also provide funding for capital projects in our universities?
Given the above scenario, what role are Vice-Chancellors and Governing Councils of Universities playing in the alleged malfeasance in the higher education sector of our country?
That is one question that deserves an urgent answer. Clearly, the reality that is staring everybody in the face, which the authorities in the higher education space have failed to admit, is that funding of university education in Nigeria by the FGN is not feasible.
Even in advanced and industrialised countries like the United States of America, USA, universities are not funded by the Federal Government directly as we have been doing over here and which has become unsustainable.
While it is correct that the United States Government fund its universities, it does so in creative and imaginative ways.
This is why there are ten (10) state-owned universities in the state of California, USA, which is the biggest and richest economy in that country.
They include the University of California, UC Los Angeles, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvin, as well as UC Davis. There are also UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz not forgetting UC San Francisco, which is a graduate studies-only university.
Most of the funding for the institutions is sourced from students fees just as other sources of funds are from revenue-generating activities of the universities-like the town-meets-the-gown business collaborations and the kindness of charitable organisations and individuals by way of endowments of chairs as well as the support of a robust alumni with a large membership of about two (2) million.
Why can we not adopt in Nigeria such a system that has worked very well in the USA?
The bottom line is that in light of the dwindling revenue generation into the treasury arising from the degenerating capacity of the country’s ability to be productive, which is due to the alarming rate of insecurity pervading the country, coupled with a bloated civil service that is inefficient in service delivery, it is a question of time before the leakages would collectively drain the national treasury.
If you add that to the high cost of maintaining a full-time legislature, it would be clear why Nigeria is insolvent right now.
Is it not striking and at the same time damning that the bloated nature of the public service is a crippling malaise that had long ago been identified by ex-Chief of Staff to President Olusegun Obasanjo and former head of the civil, Mr Steve Oronsaye-led commission that recommended the downsising or rightsising of the civil service?
Is it not mind-boggling that a school that has over 5,963 members of staff, is paid N8.5b annually as salaries, and conducts only one exam annually?
Clearly, it is a symbol of the root cause of the decay in the education sector. And there are likely to be many more such institutions in the public service.
The discovery that a tertiary institution that generates an estimated N410m annually remitted only N30m to the Federal Government’s consolidated revenue account as noted by Senator Abiodun Olujimi during the earlier referenced parley between the Senate Committee on Finance and revenue-generating agencies is a very disturbing malady afflicting the public service.
My suspicion is that the nearly 6,000 number of employees of that agency that conducts only one examination annually at the cost of over N380m is outrageous and there may also be ghost workers on the payroll of which FGN sinks N8.5b annually as staff emoluments.
Using the mismanagement of funds in the referenced institution as a barometer or yardstick for gauging the inefficiencies in the public sector, it is likely that other similar institutions in the education sector are also as wasteful because of lack of oversight by the Education Ministry and the Ministry of Finance, which should ideally engage private accounting firms to audit Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs from time to time for probity and accountability.
Typical of government, the Oronsaye proposal to streamline the public sector had been in abeyance for about a decade and a half since it was first proposed, as it had been buried in the so-called graveyard of Government White Papers, until the incumbent government recently resurrected it for possible action in light of the futility of hoping that it would be able to generate enough revenue to meet all the unrealistic expectations and demand of MDAs, including the massive funds budgeted for the sustenance of members of the National Assembly, NASS, who most men and women of goodwill in Nigeria have long concluded constitute an unnecessary drain pipe on the already distressed treasury of our beleaguered nation.
By Magnus Onyibe
