Varsities Back To The Trenches

The ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the timing have been criticised by stakeholders, who described it as ill-timed and misguided, but the union insisted that the decision to embark on the action at this period was taken in the interest of students and university development

Govt: No IPPIS, no salary 

ASUU: Strike not ill-timed

Don: FG, ASUU to seek alternative way of resolving disputes

The Nigerians universities are back in the trenches.

The university lecturers, under their umbrella body, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), last week, launched a fresh onslaught and they set for an indefinite nationwide strike that will shut down the system, disrupt academic activities and calendar in the public universities.

The fresh onslaught by ASUU is to press home the implementation of the outstanding demands.

The union had on March 9 declared a two-week job boycott for the Federal Government to implement the 2019 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government.

But, the warning strike had last week snowballed into a nationwide indefinite strike following the government’s inability to resolve the crisis by implementing the various agreements reached with the union.

ASUU had in the last few years been at loggerheads with the Federal Government over the non-implementation of the resolutions of outstanding of Memorandum of Action (MoA) of the 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement; the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and the 2017 Memorandum of Action (MoA), as well as the 2019 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which culminated to demand of “renegotiation; visitation to universities; funds for recapitalisation; revitalization of the university education; payment of arrears of Academic Earned Allowances (AEA) for lecturers, as well as funding of state universities.

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Thus, the union is currently aggrieved over the insistence of the  Federal Government that all workers in the federal universities should key into the Integrated Personnel Payment Information System (IPPIS), a payment policy introduced by the government.

Meanwhile, ASUU kicked against enrollment of its members in the new IPPIS payment policy, claiming that the policy infringes on the university autonomy and freedom, thereby describing it as enslavement, which cannot serve the purpose of the 21st Century university system.

The union also claimed that universities all over the world are known for their flexible personnel recruitment and management that IPPIS cannot handle, saying that IPPIS would take Nigerian universities back to the core civil service and over-localise Nigerian academics, whereby the system would be unable to recruit short-term and contract staff in areas of critical needs.

“IPPIS will shut the door against our colleagues from other parts of the world whose services are in dire need to give Nigerian universities increased global feasibility,” ASUU said, alleging that agents of World Bank are behind the imposition of IPPIS on Nigerian academics.

The union, which raised the alarm that the Nigerian University System should not be the guinea pig for IPPIS, which has no relevance to the global university tradition, had been threatening to embark on strike if the Federal Government should go ahead to force the implementation of the directive on ASUU by withholding the lecturers’ salary over non-enrollment of its members in the new payment system.

Despite ASUU’s position, the Federal Government insisted on the commitment of the IPPIS policy towards efficient and effective service delivery, accurate and prompt payment of salaries and wages, curbing of corruption in the system,

among others within statutory and contractual regulations, as well as providing a payroll service that is customer-focused as it utilises technology.

But, critical stakeholders have alleged that ASUU was merely fighting a battle of interest, claiming also that when the policy is fully implemented it would go a long way in blocking all financial leakages that have been favouring the university teachers.

They, however, hinted that the government through IPPIS was not deliberately targeting ASUU, but rather to curb corruption in the system.

A Professor of Mathematics Education and former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Administration) at the University of Jos (UNIJOS), Prof. Peter Lassa, in a chat with New Telegraph, bemoaned the frequent strikes in Nigerian universities, saying the action has continued to hold down the system and eventually forced many Nigerian students to study in inferior universities and colleges outside the country.

Lassa, the pioneer Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), who expressed dismay over the economic loss incurred by the system during strikes, called on ASUU and Federal Government to seek other progressive and alternative way of resolving their disputes.

This was as he pointed out that given the incessant industrial action and lack of proper attention on the part of relevant authorities to the acute rot in the system had ruined the nation’s tertiary institutions.

But, piqued by this development, Prof. Lassa wondered that most Nigerian students resorted to seeking admission into universities in neighbouring African countries, not because of the quality of their academic programmes, but basically because of the stability of their academic calendar.

He, however, regretted that incessant strikes had adversely affected teaching, research and community service in the system, as well as resulting to the colossal loss of human hours and poor quality of university education occasioned by production of half-baked graduates by universities in the country.

However, the face-off between the Federal Government and ASUU took a new twist early this month (March), when the government acting in tandem with its threat of “No IPPIS, No pay,” withheld the February salary of the lecturers.

Aggrieved by this development, ASUU, which also threatened to embark on “no salary, no work,” following the non-payment of the lecturers’ February salary, after the expiration of the two-week warning strike last week declared a full-blown indefinite nationwide strike.

This was as the union blamed the Federal Government for reneging on the earlier agreement and for what it described as breach of agreement and poor funding of universities, among others. ASUU further insisted that the IPPIS platform did not capture the peculiarities of the academic community, and thus its members would not register on the platform.

ASUU said: “Imposing IPPIS on universities is not only a violation of university laws, especially the hard-earned autonomy, but also a relegation of the Federal Government’s agreement with the union.”

However, in an exclusive interview with New Telegraph on Saturday, the National President of ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, said the ongoing strike was not mainly on IPPIS, but on several other outstanding issues.

Rather, he condemned the action of the government, saying even the payment of January 2020 salary to those, who had enrolled on IPPIS had not in any way change their position on the new pay system which violates the university autonomy.

He said: “Our demands are beyond IPPIS. The 2009 agreement is one of our demands, all issues that are outstanding in our 2009 Memorandum of Action and renegotiated 2013 MOA and we are not merely talking about IPPIS. There are five issues which we are renegotiating before the IPPIS came and we are not going to leave the main substance of ASUU’s demands, which border on the 2019 Memorandum of Understanding with the Federal Government.”

He described the IPPIS policy as a mere distraction because there were more serious issues pending to be addressed by the government, stressing that the policy cannot work beacuse it has not worked.

Ogunyemi, while explaining that the union chose this period for the ongoing strike, however, told New Telegraph that the strike was not ill-timed despite the attendant lockdown of the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19).

He added that the coronavirus saga came after ASUU had started its strike, noting that the two-week warning strike earlier declared was for the Federal Government to engage the union on the issues that were pending.

The ASUU President said: “In between the two weeks we were engaging government and we thought they would be responsive enough by using the coronavirus crisis to allow the status quo to subsist, but that did not happen. For our members, we realised that when people are hungry it will be very difficult to manage them. That was why we were really open and receptive to the government.

“But, the government had earlier agreed on some items with the union, which ASUU thought would bring some relative peace in the system, but the same government suddenly made a U-turn saying all the understandings were based on enrolling to the IPPIS.”

He insisted that the union decided that it would be better to embark on the ongoing strike now, than to allow the students to come back to campus, before embarking on its action.

Ogunyemi stressed: “Nigerians will begin to ask us why we suspended the action in the first place. Now, we are not hurting anybody, but we a telling the Federal Government that as it is addressing this coronavirus emergency, the union identifies and stand by the government, and we will work with other Nigerians to address this crisis.

“But, our matter is still on the table. And, if the government is not ready to address the matter during this period, it is better to discourage the students from going back to the campus.

I mean, if we risk the lives of our students by allowing them to come back to the campus before starting the action, Nigerians will blame us.”

ASUU President, who bemoaned the threat of the Federal Government to implement the “no IPPIS, no salary” by stopping the lecturer’s salary since February, also condemned the deduction of Third Party deductions in January salary.

He said with the deduction and non-release of the third party deductions, such as union check off dues and union cooperative contributions, the government actually wanted to hurt the interest of ASUU members and possibly killed the union.

Despite the fact that ASUU came up with the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as alternative platform, which the government set aside, Ogunyemi accused the government of insensitivity to the plight of its workers, particularly university workers.

According to him, with the action of the government in resorting to the use of hunger as a weapon of war, especially at a time the union leadership was dialoguing with them, shows that government is not care about what happen to the lecturers’ families even during this coronavirus period when Nigerians cannot not go out; or when the people have no money to buy food items in their homes.

For government to sudden renege on its earlier agreements, he pointed out, was not in the spirit of negotiation as “negotiation is about give and take,” even as he noted that the government had been treating the university system with levity and neither care about those who are supposed to be scholars and researchers that should have been active in addressing national crises.

Before embarking on the strike, he recalled that the issues had been separated, because ASUU fully identifies with Nigerians on the coronavirus pandemic and thus had planned ways of intervening.

In view of this, the union leader said all chapters of the union had been mandated to produce hand sanitizers and provide information and education materials, including printed posters and hand bills on how to contain the spread of coronavirus, a programme which, according to him, will be launched at Ibadan today (Tuesday).

Members of the union, he said, had set aside our disagreement with the government in view of this global crisis to play our role within our limited and scarce resources.

However, the National President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Danielson Akpan, in his reaction, described the strike and action of ASUU as sad and unfortunate.

He noted that the strike was wrongly timed; saying for a union which prides itself to be working for the interest of the system to embark on strike, when the entire country is trying to salvage the present situation of coronavirus pandemic, shows lack of commitment.

“This attitude of ASUU has shown that the union is concerned all about incentives and welfare. We, in NANS do not see the strike as anything and of no effect or impact. All we are concerned about now is that we want to salvage the present situation. We asked the government to shut down our institutions because of the coronavirus. Is this the way to serve the nation, which ASUU has been claiming to do? Embarking on strike when the entire country and world were locked down because of the pandemic is unreasonable.”

But, Ogunyemi, who said that the timing of the strike was purposely fixed in the interest of the students, urged Nigerians to see the connection of what ASUU had been agitating for and the present pandemic.

Thus, he insisted that if the government had funded the laboratories and equipped the universities with the right research equipment and enabling environment for such to thrive, the lecturers and the entire ivory towers by now should have been able to showcase what they could do with the laboratories.

The union leader, who expressed worry over the disquieting level of decay and rot in the universities, further added: “But, our university system does not have the state-of-the-art facilities to do competitive research so that Nigerian scholars can also make meaningful contributions.

“What ASUU has been saying about internationalization is now on the ground. Now, as the nation is addressing coronavirus, we are thinking of global solutions. That is the way university knowledge operates. University knowledge is not about the local way of solving problems, it is about attracting the best across the world to come and work in our system because the knowledge such scholars are bring will be of international and global value. If we have the right facilities it is possible that we can bring scholars from China or other climes to our system and through that interconnectivity trigger research that could lead to using of local ingredients to develop vaccines for coronavirus or other epidemic confronting the country or African continent.”

According to him, the Nigerian universities should not be treated in isolation by coming up with a policy that does not call for the kind of flexibility required by the system.

“The government cannot come up with a policy that violates the autonomy of university system because scholars should operate independently from the civil service, but the government wants to domesticate the university scholars and confine the university system to court role services so that before lecturers could be brought to the universities they needed clearance from the Head of Service of the Federation and clearance from the Accountant General of the Federation. No, things don’t work that way,” Ogunyemi noted.

He pointed out that despite ASUU’s call since 2012 and 2013 for N1.3 trillion revitalisation fund to be injected into the system for the period of six years, the government was able to release N200 billion.

The problem, he added, was that the government had not prioritised education in its schemes, saying: “The people may not actually see the link between what is happening now and what ASUU has been asking for, but if the level of revitalisation funds that we were envisaging had been released, by now our laboratories, our pharmaceutical science departments, and faculties would be in a position to produce some of the materials and basic medicament they are required to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Source: Newstelegrahng.com