Abdullahi M. Gulloma
The federal government, this week, said it cannot pay the sum N284 billion earned allowance demanded by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The position of the federal government was made known by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Mr Chris Ngige, in Abuja, on Wednesday. Lack of money was cited by Ngige as reason why the government cannot pay the lecturers’ allowance.
However, the minister said that the government had, during a tripartite meeting comprising the National Assembly, federal government and ASUU, agreed that endowment funds accruing to universities should be excluded from the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
But, he pointed out, while the government agreed to ASUU’s demand to exclude endowment funds from the TSA, universities’ councils retain the right to audit such an account.
“The other aspect of it is the earned allowance,” he said. “The earned allowance is the only one that is not sorted out now because everybody knows and agrees that we are in a recession. If we are in a recession and you are asking us to pay you N284 billion, nobody will pay it because the money is not there. So, they (ASUU) agreed and the National Assembly also agreed, but the government offered them some amount, pending when we finish auditing of the first tranche of money that has been given to them in that same area of earned allowances.”
With this development, an agreement acceptable to the parties, but especially acceptable to students and parents, can be said to have been reached.
Of course, the importance of education cannot be overemphasised, making it incumbent on stakeholders to guarantee its success. Globally, education is considered as a human right that should be accorded to all human beings. In fact, that was the reason why international human right bodies consider education as a fundamental human right.
The first and perhaps the greatest challenge facing Nigeria and making it difficult for good quality education to be sustained and developed is inadequate funding of institutions by especially the federal government, thus, leading to the intractable ASUU crisis.
No doubt, it is regrettable that universities are grossly under-funded. Evidence exists on the degree of dilapidation and neglect of the institutions, leading to the non-payment of lecturers’ allowances as a result of which strikes have become order of the day, while lack of teaching and learning materials and poor working conditions remain dominant characteristics of the university system.
Yet, there cannot be argument that financial mismanagement and lack of accountability by some university administrators and government officials, which often lead to diversion of substantial resources from the education institutions to private ends, also account for maladministration of the university system in the country.
Consequently, every government, which cherishes sustainable development of education, should, as a matter of responsibility, encourage and finance universities’ research programmes, inventions and mass production of creative students.
It is lamentable to find that instructional and living conditions have deteriorated in most of the universities and their classrooms, libraries and laboratories are in deplorable state, all leading to decline in academic standards.
Adequate attention must be focused on these areas if universities are to serve the purpose for which they were created for and address, comprehensively, the reasons for the lingering ASUU crisis.
Still, it can be argued that in universities, nothing fails like success. Everyone teaching in a university should want to bring ideas, facts and principles to life in a way that will encourage their students to find out more for themselves. The heart of teaching in higher education is, as Whitehead, an educationist, puts it, the imaginative acquisition of knowledge.
A university education is nothing if it does not fire up a burning desire to learn. Imagination illuminates the facts and puts a pattern on them. It makes the dull and obscure parts of learning a challenge to be overcome, rather than a burden to be endured.
Effective university teaching, regrettably what is lacking in Nigerian university system and which ASUU must do something about, matters a lot, not because it has much to do with student satisfaction. That’s a by-product. It matters because it gets students to engage with abstract ideas in a way that allows them to make the subject their own.
Quality teachings, which can be achieved only if issue of welfare of the ASUU members is accorded attention, is the single most important way of producing graduates who can reason and act for themselves, and apply theory to practical problems.
The other important thing is the resolve of the students themselves. They have to use effort to convert the opportunity into the outcome. Students decide their own destinies and lecturers only add or subtract value at the margins. Skilful teaching, by teachers who wear their learning with imagination, can inspire them to do more than they ever thought they could.
Teaching in higher education should never fool students into thinking there’s an easy path to success. Rather, it should make the hardest road enjoyable to follow by communicating complex ideas clearly and succinctly.
Far too often, our education system fails our students by producing graduates who are good at learning facts and solving commonplace problems. They don’t throw themselves with passion and zest into their studies. They wander feebly through their assessments by faithfully repeating what they have heard and read.
This is a very poor kind of student experience. Unfortunately, no one, other than the lecturer, is responsible for this poor experience. Lecturers have often developed the skills to get students active and test the knowledge they had acquired. They have schooled them to succeed, but not afforded them higher education, precisely what they are hired to achieve.
What makes higher education higher is insight, energy and imagination, not buildings or number of universities. Knowledge is a necessary step towards good judgment, but it doesn’t take you far enough on its own. Self-critical awareness of one’s own ignorance in a subject is the only true precursor of further inquiry.
Whitehead said: “You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.”
This is not how we want our lecturers and students to be, without wisdom to properly run our universities. This is not why our government spends tax payers’ money to achieve, even if the money is inadequate.
Finally, though, the real issue lies in adequate funding of the university system and holding the lecturers and administrators accountable for production, or otherwise, of desired products.
Evidence exists of the degree of dilapidation and neglect of the institutions, leading to the non-payment of lecturers’ allowances as a result of which strikes have become the order of the day, while lack of teaching and learning materials and poor working conditions remain dominant characteristics of the university system
