Akinyooye: ASUU, what do you want?

MY son is a post-graduate student of Agriculture in the second oldest university in Nigeria, a hot-bed of industrial action though, but nonetheless the most well-reported internationally. He came home shortly before ASUU embarked on its latest industrial action to say he was no longer going to continue his Master’s programme. Why? He said he was finding it difficult to cope with his supervisor who in his opinion does not seem to have time for him. Out of naivety he moved himself to another unit only to meet with the same brick wall and the consternation of his appointed supervisor to boot. So he thought since they were all the same, he could not see any way out except to quit, even though I had paid in full for the course and he was having his pocket-money regularly. He was extremely bitter.

I could not understand the situation until a few days later when the news came out that ASUU has embarked on yet another industrial action, this time on the non-payment of “earned allowances”. According to newspaper report especially The Guardian of July 2, 2013 quoting a high ranking ASUU official “earned allowances refer to what the teachers are entitled to for supervising post-graduate students’ theses and the excess workload entailed in attending to more students than the required number, in the course of their primary duties. According to the official, the non-payment of this allowance since 2009 is the reason university lecturers had been reluctant to take on post-graduate students or accept to supervise thesis at post-graduate level. In effect, give or take the human imperfection of my son, his observation of his supervisor’s reluctance to supervise his work may not be unconnected with the probable directive from the union to use that approach to drive home ASUU’s demand for the payment of this “earned allowance”, a subtle form of industrial action, which my son was not aware of but would be making himself a victim of by throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

What has continued to puzzle me is that parents, especially in the southern part of this country are ready to pay for the education and welfare of their children at all levels as evidenced by their acceptance of private schools and universities and the high fees they charge. Whenever there are moves by federal universities to build the cost of funding into the bill payable by parents, ASUU would say No and the students would join the chorus. So I ask ASUU what exactly do you want? Why are you not allowing whoever wants your commodity (Western style classroom education), to pay for it? In the Northern part of this country, this type of education is “Boko” and it is “Haram” (evil) not to be touched with a ten-foot pole, while in the South here it is “mai chau” (goodness) and we are ready to pay anything to have it. In all free enterprise nations like Nigeria, parents save money for the education of their children because we believe this is the only legacy we can bequeath to them, but then it is time-sensitive because conditions do change. A parent that is able today may not be able tomorrow, ditto for the child that could be ready today but could lose interest tomorrow.

In planned economies of socialist nations, they plan for and would train only the number of engineers, doctors, lawyers, architects and all others they would need annually, and even the number by which they would allow their population to increase. There is nothing like unemployment in those countries because the state would have made sure no one was idle even if it meant pegging the number of the children their citizens could have as being announced recently in Burma. It is not so in free enterprise economies like Nigeria. Here we can have as many wives and children as we want. We go to school because we want to not because the government compelled us to or indicated any need for it, neither would the government promise anyone a job upon graduation. I did Accountancy in my undergraduate and did not consult with any government or anyone else for that matter before I started it, neither was I expecting any job anywhere expect out of sheer luck and divine providence. What I wanted was education first and foremost and was ready and did pay for it every inch of the way by doing all the odd jobs like washing dishes in hotels, being guard, selling newspapers and driving taxi all to pay my way for my studies, while in the United States, ditto for my post-graduate. I was not doing all that because I knew I would get a job, No. No one promised me a job, and I was not sure I would get one or even be ready to work for anyone.

I wanted education to make my journey in life easier because everything on earth has been written and, to my mind if you cannot read them you are as good as dead because you would be literally blind, deaf and dumb. I look at the first degree as the primary school of education, a Master’s degree as the secondary level while the Ph.D. is the university level, the pinnacle. I tell my children that education should not be seen by them as a license to the paid-slavery status of the working class but for the independence of their minds to ease their journey through life. As a sage once said “Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave”. I believe that if I have education and decided to be selling groundnuts, the way I would sell mine would be different from the way an uneducated person would sell his. I could even make money from my ash while he could throw his away.

Every time ASUU says the government should find solution to the problems facing the nation, I wonder if their members knew that the society looks up to the university system and its products to do just that as its think-thank. The government is made up of its products and even a former ASUU member is heading it today, having succeeded another former member during whose tenure this contentious 2009 document was signed. Was this document a trap or why are the former ASUU members now in the position to implement its content not doing so? Why is ASUU and its former members now in the government holding the nation to ransom over a document the people knew nothing about?

To my mind ASUU is a major contributor to the declining university education standard in this country because it would not allow other stakeholders to participate in the funding. It would not allow willing parents to pay for the education of their children. Let’s face the facts, the government does not benefit directly or indirectly from university education, it is the educated individual that does because he/she gets paid directly for services rendered. I worked for 27 years for a private outfit and my salary comes directly to my pocket, not to the government. I spend it the way I liked not to the government, ditto for all employed people in and outside the government. The glory of any educational achievement goes directly to the individual (like all the Nobel laureates of this world) and then to the society. No one would call on the government of a country to come and collect a prize on behalf of its citizen. The winner collects the prize and uses it any way he wanted. The praise does not go to the government either.

Like all other parents in a free enterprise nation, I did not obtain a permit from the government before I started having my children neither did I before sending them to school. I did not seek the approval or guarantee of a job before enrolling them in the universities neither did they promise me one. If all these were done out of the volition of each and every one of us why should the government be blamed for the outcome when it was not a party to the decision. Governments do not create jobs; they rely on taxes and royalties from the private sector.

I implore ASUU to please leave the government and its civil servants out of the education and welfare of our children in federal universities. Build the cost into the fees and let scholarships from both the public and private sector take care of those that can’t afford it. I pray this would be the last strike by ASUU on this issue of funding. We have had enough of it.

• Dr. Akinyooye lives in Ibadan.