Olubanji: Wave of fee hike mocks ASUU strike

ACADEMIC Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) embarked on a six-month strike in the second half of the year 2013. The prominent demand of the strike was improved funding of the education sector. Federal Government made several efforts to reduce the demands of the strike to a mere disagreement over earned allowances.

 But ASUU’s revelation of the endemic rot in the education sector, exemplified by dilapidated learning infrastructure and ridiculous teaching and learning equipment, garnered significant public sympathy for the cause of ASUU. With time, slogans that – “government should stop wasting this country’s wealth on profligacy, but spending it on developing the future of the country” – soon gained prominence. With an agreement that N200 billion would be disbursed to the university system, ASUU called off the strike.

Barely six months after the struggle to save public education from total collapse, disastrous wave of fee hike is felt all over the country. In OAU, EKSU, LASU and UNILAG, students there are confronted with one form of fee hike or another. And it is commendable to note that these students have been resisting this systematic policy of government to totally commercialise education and price it out of the reach of the masses. In fact a bold and long battle of LASU students against the fee policy of Lagos State government forced the government to retract its policy of outrageous fee regime in LASU, and the fee totally reversed to its N25,000 status quo.

It is then clear that government only reluctantly conceded to the demands of ASUU and it is ready to withdraw these concessions back through the cruelest means imaginable – taxing poor parents to pay for education or leave it. The Chairman of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Federal Universities, Prof. Kimse Okoko, while arguing for the policy of tuition fee in federal universities, said “Government could not single-handedly fund the university system and pull it out of its current state of rot in spite of its best efforts and intentions” (Premium Times, July 9, 2014).

Of course there are rots in the education sector. Pathetic conditions of students overcrowding lecture halls and using kerosene stoves to replace Bunsen burners have in fact transformed these rots to stinking mess! But the Nigerian government, with its striking culture of misplacing priorities, is the primary cause of this rot. We need to ask the ruling elite who sit on the stupendous wealth of this country to fund education, not the poorly paid Nigerians who are struggling to feed with less than two dollars every day. It is obvious that echelons of Nigerian universities and government-appointed Pro-chancellors who monitor them are in a determined conspiracy to insulate government from the questions of funding education. The only interpretation to give to Prof. Okoko statement is that “we (students and workers) should not concern ourselves with those who siphon our national wealth; instead we should brace up the crumbs that fall off the table of these gentlemen with the widow’s mite of Nigerian working parents.” That is inhumane!

ASUU must clearly distant itself from this conspiracy not only in words, but also in practice. The exceptional principle of ASUU’s 2013 struggle requires that ASUU continually struggle against education commercialisation, now disguised as fee hike. Recent news of fee increment in schools, especially those ratified by University Senate such as OAU, cast doubts on the virility of ASUU principle against education commercialisation and its demands that government funds university education. For instance, in OAU, the Senate of the university – majorly comprising academic staff – resolved to increase fee all across board. Although the Congress of ASUU in the branch resolved to condemn the increment and fight for its reversal, but a protest of students against the fee was greeted with closure of school ordered by the same university Senate and a wide range of condemnation from lecturers.

The issue of fee hike in Nigerian universities should not be seen by ASUU as exclusively students’ problems and be addressed only through political statements. ASUU members in affected schools should not be indifferent to students’ struggle and resistance against fee hike. Support and encouragements from their lecturers will go a long way to motivate students in their struggle against the organised bandits terrorizing the education sector. Also the idea that decisions in university Senate contravene the position of Staff unions and Students’ Unions on campuses requires an attention of all education workers and students. The system is simply undemocratic! And a new campaign must be genuinely taken up by education workers demanding that decision-making organs of universities reflect democratic representations of workers and students.

Inadvertently, with the nominal role ASUU is playing in the current struggle against fee hike, fertile grounds are being given to the seed of doubts over the philosophy of ASUU, propagated by the most unscrupulous elements. In a recent public statement on the OAU fee hike, the President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) stated that “fee increment was part of the agreements entered into last year between ASUU and Federal Government… ASUU has received their allowances from FG while government is looking for an avenue to recoup their money”.

Of course this statement ridicules the essence of NANS and it reveals the drastic degeneracy in Nigeria’s students’ movement. If a leader of the Nigerian Students Movement can proceed from the premise that government is recovering “its money” by charging outrageous school fees, then such leader portrays clear unreadiness to fight government to fund education. This was the same philosophy the Yinka Gbadebo-led NANS leadership tightly held on to during the ASUU 2013 strike. Whether ASUU was correct or not in demanding for better funding, or whether it was true that Nigerian students go through pitiable, dehumanizing conditions to learn in public varsities, NANS was not interested, and insisted that the striking lecturers were only being recalcitrant.

However, a bold support of ASUU as well as other unions in the education sector for the various students’ struggle breaking out in the country is not only capable of assuring them victory, but would mentor a new layer of radical students’ leaders committed to students’ cause. Distant support will only create disillusionment in resisting anti-poor policy among growing layers of students’ activists who were motivated by the 2013 ASUU strike.

It must be added that the current wave of fee hike shows that the struggle to save public education from total collapse has not ended. If after six months of a protracted strike action of ASUU and government is still systematically drafting poor parents into the scheme of exploitation and commercialisation, then a renewed struggle of workers and students in the education sector must be waged. ASUU 2013 strike has taught a lesson that government can be fought and forced to do what is appropriate. But we will continue to have this fall back – barbarism of fee hike – if the struggle is not given an organised, united character. It is thus high time for ASUU, SSANU, NASU, ASUP, NANS, COEASU, NAAT, NUT and other education unions to be united and build a strong force formidable enough to fight for appropriate funding of the education sector.

• Olubanji is a student of Philosophy in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and the National Mobilisation Officer of Education Rights Campaign.

Tweet