ASUU V. FG: When Education Becomes A Burden By; Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, Esq

On November 7, 2018, the Academic Staff Union of Universities,
(ASUU), commenced an indefinite strike action, over the
non-implementation of the 2009 agreement executed between the
federal government and ASUU. There is no hope in sight of the
terminal period of the present strike by the teachers, save that
the students, their parents and the nation, are paying heavily for
it.

Nigeria is a member of the United Nations, which has established
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO), primarily to promote education for all, with
a mandate to lead the Global Education 2030 Agenda through
Sustainable Development Goal 4. It is prescribed by the UN that all
members States shall make reasonable efforts to allocate not less
than 26% of their annual budget to education. This is so because
the UN and indeed all of humanity now consider education as a human
right. This stems from several declarations and conventions,
including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, which recognizes the right to free, compulsory
primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary
education accessible for all and an obligation to develop equitable
access to higher education, by the progressive introduction of free
higher education, as encapsulated in Article 26 of the United
Nations Declaration on Human Rights and replicated in Articles 13
and 14 of International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights.

It is in the light of all the above that Nigeria declared its
educational objectives in section 18 of the 1999 Constitution as
follows:
“Government shall direct it’s policy towards ensuring that there
are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels.
Government shall promote science and technology.
Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy; and to this end,
Government shall as and when practicable provide:
(a) free, compulsory and universal primary education;
(b) free secondary education;
(c) free university education; and
(d) free adult literacy programme.”

Nigeria has always made feeble attempts to implement the UN
charter on education. Indeed, in the early 1970s, we had the
Universal Primary Education (UPE), through which most governments
in the regions adopted free education. In the South West in
particular, Chief Obafemi Awolowo made free education his priority
programme, with tremendous results in human capital development.
Till date, most States in the South West of Nigeria have compulsory
free education at the elementary stages. In Lagos State for
instance, section 9 of the Education Law of Lagos State provides
that “tuition in either a primary or a secondary school shall be
free of charge”, and it imposes a jail term of eighteen months upon
anyone who receives or obtains any fee or levy as tuition. In 2004,
the Federal Government of Nigeria enacted the Universal Basic
Education Act, which makes provision for basic education. The Act
also provides for the establishment of the Universal Basic
Education Commission, UBEC, to co-ordinate the implementation of
the programme, at state and local government levels, through the
State Basic Education Board, SUBEB and the Local Government
Education Authority, LGEA. The Education Tax Fund was also
established.

Having laid the right foundation for basic education, the
reasonable expectation then would be to catapult such huge
investment into profit by consolidating the gains thereof, at the
higher levels of education. Given the huge investments involved in
the establishment and sustenance of higher education, it became
part of the basic responsibilities of government, leading to the
establishment of several colleges, polytechnics and universities,
in the early 1960s and 1970s, by the federal government. Due to
lack of funding and total abandonment, most of these institutions
have since become a shadow of their glorious pasts. Some
photographs were sent to me recently of some halls of residence in
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, with decrepit toilets and
empty rooms, where students sleep on mattresses spread on bare
floors.

When the students’ movement was vibrant and assertive, they took
up successive governments on funding of education. But given the
eclipse of that revolutionary group over the years, the teachers
have been most vociferous, in the clamour for quality education at
the higher levels. ASUU has been at the forefront of this struggle,
which has now become more of a ritual. Matters came to a head in
2009, after a protracted strike by ASUU, which led the federal
government to execute a comprehensive agreement, basically “to
address the identified rot in the University System, as evidenced
in dilapidated infrastructure and poor conditions of service for
all categories of staff.” The federal government team was led by
the late Deacon Gamaliel Onosode, who was once the Pro-Chancellor
of the University of Ibadan.
The comprehensive agreement addressed the issues of:
1). Non-Salary Conditions of Service;
2.) Pension for Academic Staff and Compulsory Retirement Age;
3.) Establishment of a Pension Management Company;
4. Establishment of National Health Insurance Scheme;
5). Funding for universities, aggregated to a cumulative N1.5
trillion, between 2009-2011;
6). University Autonomy and Academic Reforms, by which government
pledged non-interference in the statutory powers of all levels of
university authorities;
7.) Prohibition of appointment of Sole Administrator in any
Nigerian University and maximum six months non-renewable tenure for
Principal Officers appointed in acting capacity;
9.) To amend certain legislations directly affecting university
administration, especially the JAMB Act, NUC Act, Education Act,
etc, all for which Amendment Bills were proposed and annexed as
Appendix V to the Agreement; and
10.) To set up an implementation committee for the execution of the
terms of the agreement.

This was ten years ago in 2009 and it is a marvel that a strike
action is still required to execute an agreement duly executed by
the presumed representatives of the federal government. Of course
it is not in doubt that ASUU played itself into the hands of
government through this Agreement, being an unenforceable document
with no binding capacity. The signatories to the agreement were Dr.
Wale Babalakin, SAN, then Chairman, Committee of Pro-Chancellors of
Federal Universities, Deacon Gamaliel Onosode, Chairman, FGN/ASUU
Re-negotiation Committee and Professor Ukachukwu Awuzie, President
of ASUU.

First, Pro-Chancellors of Universities cannot be said to be
legal representatives of the federal government to execute an
enforceable agreement. The Minister of Education who set up the
process of the negotiations should be the appropriate person to
sign on behalf of government or the Attorney-General of the
Federation or Secretary to the Federal Government. Second, since
the agreement itself dictates autonomy and freedom for all
statutory organs of the university, it is taken that the chairmen
and members of Governing Councils of the Universities are all part
of the university. How then can two Pro-Chancellors claim to be
executing an agreement purportedly on behalf of the federal
government? The legal consequence is that the agreement is an
internal document of the Universities, executed by two
Pro-Chancellors and ASUU President; it has nothing to do with the
federal government!
Third, with the nature of politicians that occupy government
positions, any agreement with itinerant public officers should
immediately be forwarded to the National Assembly to be properly
documented, enacted, assented to and duly gazetted, or else in ten
years from now, we will still need another ASUU strike to implement
any agreement that may be reached, even now. A government that is
led by a political party that has openly denied and reneged upon
its own manifesto, cannot be trusted to be faithful to any
agreement that has no force of law.

Given the statutory obligations of government in respect of
education, it is not expected that a strike action would be
required to implement that responsibility. However, when one
considers the record of strike actions executed to get the present
government to respond to issues, expecting any premium upon quality
education, without a conscious struggle from all stakeholders, will
most probably be a sojourn in the dreamworld. The future and
success of any nation depends largely on the value it places on
education in all its ramifications. That is why the strike action
by ASUU cannot be faulted for now.

However, deliberate efforts must be made on the side of ASUU, to
translate the gains of each strike into a workable template that
will allow resort to other alternative methods of enforcement, by
avoiding the legal pitfalls of the 2009 agreement. If it will take
a whole year to lock up the schools in order to achieve a holistic
solution and overcome the various challenges of securing quality
higher education, by all means let us do so and then ensure that
the result of such revolutionary effort, is enduring, permanent and
enforceable. If it is becoming difficult for labour to sustain a
strike, if it has become herculean for lawyers to enforce a boycott
and for civil society to embark upon simple protests, on account of
the perfidious infiltration by renegade “comrades” and treacherous
progressives who have now adorned the political space to pollute
and frustrate all mass-based agitations, I see an ASUU strike
becoming impossible, in years to come. For now however, we all
declare support for the ASUU strike, so that education will not
remain a burden to us all.