1st November, 2013
University undergraduates find ways of coping with an unending strike
Sporting a white hijab and a headscarf, Obabiyi Aishah Ajibola was over the moon, as she knelt down, shed tears of joy and recited the Koran with glee. The 21-year-old undergraduate of the University of Lagos had just been announced winner of the World Muslim beauty pageant at a shopping mall in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 18 September. Ajibola, who attributed her stroke of luck to “Almighty Allah”, was impassioned, not just because of her new high profile and the 25 million rupiah ($2,200) prize money she had just received, but mainly because she was able to participate in that beauty pageant. That Nigerian universities were closed as a result of the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASSU, made that possible.
Olawale Ayodele Ojo, a 25-year-old 400 level Agronomy student at Ladoke Akintola University, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, and winner of season six of MTN Project Fame, hinged his success on God’s grace. He said it was because ASUU was on strike that he was able to participate in the music reality show. “I came up to register when ASUU was on strike…I believe that is how God wants it to be. The strike is a blessing in disguise for me,” he said.
Though the strike is a blessing in disguise to Ajibola and Ojo, it is not so to millions of Nigerian students who are either groaning at home, forced to take up paid employment or indulge in frivolous activities they would have, otherwise, brushed aside with panache were the universities in session. Perpetual Udoh, a 400 level Computer Science student at the University of Port Harcourt, told TheNEWS that she now vends newspapers and magazines from which she gets commission. Udoh has also enrolled in a computer training school where she is learning Java programming.
However, her course mate, Loveth Uke, who now distributes newspapers and magazines, blames the federal government for the situation they are in. “The government should reconsider its tough stand on the strike and meet ASUU request because from the argument of the lecturers, they are not fighting for their welfare alone,” she said. Uke, who believes that the industrial action has not only disrupted individual plans of students, advised her female colleagues to avail themselves of this opportunity to learn skills such as hair dressing, tailoring, cake baking, hall decorations etc.
Badmos Abiodun Temidayo, a 19-year-old 200 level student of Botany, University of Ibadan, however, did not wait to get a paid employment. He has started utilising the painting skills he had acquired before gaining admission into the university. Since July, he has painted over 30 flats and got paid for it. “They are not paying me like a professional but I manage the little they are giving me because I am using it to feed myself, while I save some. I know if I continue this way, I would save enough to help myself up to Master degree level because I don’t want my mother, who is retiring in two years’ time, to use her gratuity and pension to send me to school,” Temidayo, who also organises an extra-mural programme for students preparing for the Joint Matriculation examination, said.
Jumoke Olugbile, a 200 level student of Biochemistry at Onabisi Onabanjo University Ago-Iwoye, is currently an apprentice at a hairdressing salon in Abadina, University of Ibadan. Though her three-month apprenticeship will end this month, she told the magazine that she would continue as long as the strike lasts. “We were writing our first semester examination when the strike started. I had written two papers. When I realised that the strike would not be called off on time, I told my parents that I wanted to learn hairdressing. Not only did they agree, they also supported me,” she explained, while appealing to the federal government and the lecturers to shift ground for the sake of the students.
While Amina Idris, a student of Kogi State University, Ayingba, deals in second, hand cloths, Mulikat Shuaibu is into make-up business to keep her self busy. She is a student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Unfortunately, Blessing Oguru of Nnamdi, Azikwe University was not engaged.
However, Momoh Ibrahim, a 200-level student of Economics at the University of Jos, does not have the luxury of either a paid employment or a vocation. Bored with sleeping and watching television at home, he is, at present, assisting his elder brother, an independent petroleum marketer, with selling petroleum products in Kaduna. Though Ibrahim claimed he had made some profits from helping his brother to lift Premium Motor Spirit from Kaduna Refining Petro-Chemical Company, KRPC, he was unhappy that ASUU had not called off the strike even when the federal government offered to release some money.
While Ibrahim and Olatunji Kehinde of Ekiti State Univerisity are sad over the lingering industrial action, Deborah Atinuke Olorunlogbon, a 400 level student of Business Administration at the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, wants the strike to persist so that she can continue investing the loan she got from her banker elder sister to embark on recharge card sales. Olorunlogbon, who started the business two months ago at the very busy Barnawa shopping complex area in Zaria, now has two other business sites. “The strike is a blessing in disguise. Even if they call it off today, I have established a business that will survive if I am not around, “ she averred.
Should ASUU call off the strike whether the federal government meets their demand or not, Chuks Okoye (not real surname), a 300 level student of Educational Administration at the University of Lagos, is planning to run a programme in Basic Presentation at the Federal Radio Corporation Of Nigeria, Ikoyi, Lagos. He told TheNEWS that the lecturers should not soft-pedal until their demands are met. “Honestly, they should carry on with strike until the government bends and does what is right. If they give up now, everything will be wasted. And all the stress and delay we have gone through would be in vain. And the federal government, as usual, would think that they can blindfold individuals and do whatever they want and get away with it as usual. So they should continue until they get what they want,” Okoye said. Though Chiamaka Okoro (not real surname), a 300 level student of Integrated Sccience at the University of Lagos is not happy over her continued stay at home, she wants ASSU to continue with the industrial action until their demands are met.
Now, the federal government and ASUU are at daggers drawn. Though the contending parties have met over ten times to resolve the imbroglio, they have not been able to resolve their differences. The federal government believes that the N100 billion and the N30 billion it offered the universities for infrastructure and allowance respectively are enough, while the lecturers’ union is insisting that government must fulfil the terms of the 2009 agreement it had with ASUU.
However, the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Mr. Chukwumeka Wogu, while briefing the Bamanga Tukur-led Committee as he was rendering his achievements as minister in July, said the agreement he met was impossible to implement. Scandalised by the lingering industrial action, the federal government believes ASUU has been politicised and is being used by the opposition to destabilise President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
But ASUU president, Dr. Nasir Faggae, insists that the union is acting in the interest of the university system and the country in general. Faggae said at a press conference in Lagos recently that the government team, led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim and Governor Gabriel Suswan of Benuel State, at their last meeting spoke with a tone of finality that government would not implement the massive injection of fund to revitalise the public universities as stated in the 2009 agreement, which is the crux of the strike action. “Rather, it (government) is only making dubious statement of supporting some universities with the sum of N100 billion. Government has also declared that it will not pay university academics their Earned Allowances which accumulated from 2009 to 2013,” Faggae said, adding that the government, rather, was talking about providing N30 billion to assist various governing councils of Federal universities to defray the arrears of N92 billion owed to all categories of staff in the university system. “It was a sinister ‘take it or leave it’ threat of ‘grab-the-crumbs or starve-to-death,” the union leader said.
In a recent interview with a national daily, Faggae said students were tired of the incessant industrial actions by the university lecturers due to the Federal Government’s failure to implement the agreement it had with ASUU since 2009 and that the union had decided to heed the advice of the students. “Our students have come out to say they don’t want us to call off the strike until the Federal Government answers us, because they don’t want us to call off now and later we go back to strike again. So, we are heeding the advice of our students,” he said.
The President, National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, Mr. Yinka Gbadebo, joined the fray recently when he accused the university lecturers of being unfair to the students and urged them to go back to the classrooms while negotiation continues, adding that ASSU must first redress the issue of immoral behaviour that is associated with them before talking about infrastructure development. “We know of lecturers today who, before students can pass their courses, will ask for what we call ‘sorting’, that is, students should pay them. If ASUU wants the nation’s education system to become what it is painting before the public, there must be self-cleansing among its members. It is a common knowledge that ASUU members sleep with our girls before they pass them. Why are we not talking about that? We cannot be blaming government for everything because we also constitute government,” Gbadebo averred.
Reacting to Gbadebo’s call on ASUU to sheathe its sword, Kenneth Obinna (not real surname), a 300 level student of Economics at the University of Lagos, seemed to speak the minds of majority of the students when he said in unequivocal terms: “I heard the President of NANS, Mr. Yinka Gbadebo, said ASUU should put a stop to the strike. The lecturers are in their right senses, and they are justified. Though we are suffering now at home, we believe they are fighting for the betterment of education in this country. And for the first time, let’s stand our ground. Let’s say to the federal government, ‘NO, we can’t take this any longer’.”
When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Now that the two parties are still at loggerheads, and the students are in support of their lecturers, where the impasse will lead remains to be seen.
–Nehru Odeh, additional reporting by Okafor Ofiebor, Femi Adi and Gbenro Adesina.