Stakeholders have become used to the longstanding cat-and-mouse relationship between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN). The posture of ASUU has principally been that the nation’s university education system is in the doldrums, that the injection of huge funds into the system is inevitable to make it globally competitive, and that the required funds are within the capacity of the Federal Government to dispense.

The government’s posture, on the other hand, has been that it has limited resources, and that these resources must be judiciously spread across different competing sections of the country, thereby making it unrealistic to meet the demands of the union.

In spite of these seemingly irreconcilable positions, both parties have, now and then, signed agreements. However, these agreements have been the crux of subsequent conflicts which have resulted in heavy costs to the union and the nation. This raises the question of why the agreements were signed in the first place. This question is especially relevant for what has come to be known as the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement. All subsequent FGN-ASUU conflicts and recurrent strike by the union have been hinged on the non-implementation or unsatisfactory implementation of aspects of this agreement. The last of such strike took place from February to October 2022, and had serious yet-to-be-resolved implications for the union and the Nigerian university system.

Currently, a new problem is brewing, and ASUU has given a 21-day notice of strike to pressurise the government to address the union’s complaints. This is followed by a 14-day notice of strike with effect from September 23, 2024. In a release on the notice, ASUU declared: “The issues in contention include (a) conclusion of the renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, based on the Nimi Briggs Committee’s DraftAgreement of 2021; (b) release of withheld three-and-a-half months’ salaries due to the 2022 strike action; (c) release of unpaid salaries for staff on sabbatical, part-time, and adjunct appointments affected by the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS); (d) release of outstanding third-party deductions such as check-off dues and cooperative contributions; € funding for the revitalisation of public universities, partly captured in the 2023 Federal Government budget and, (g) payment of Earned Academic Allowances (EAA), partly captured in the 2023 Federal Government Budget.”

Others are ‘‘proliferation of universities by federal and state governments; implementation of the reports of visitation panels to universities; illegal dissolution of governing councils; and University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as a replacement for IPPIS.

Considering the recurrence of these issues, Babajide Kolade-Otitoju of TVC’s “Journalists Hangout” noted on September 26, 2024: “It’s like every government just kicks the can down the road.” In this regard, as the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education in 2021, the current Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Mr. Sonny Echono, was reported to have said: “I have heard so much about the fact that the government has failed to honour the agreements with ASUU. I have a different view about that because most of these agreements are imperfect. If somebody comes to my house and puts a gun to my head, I might agree to everything because those agreements are signed under duress.”

In this vein, the December 31, 2018 issue of THISDAY newspaper reported on how an ASUU strike which commenced in November 2018 had created national anxiety in respect of the 2019 general elections, which were scheduled to begin on February 23 and which required “that the staff and students of federal tertiary institutions should be in school at least a month before the 2019 general election.” According to the newspaper, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) noted: “This is one critical resource and the absence will have adverse effects on the ad hoc staff requirement of INEC.”

Moreover, the 2020 ASUU strike commenced on the verge of the global COVID-19-induced lockdown or stay at home order – a time when all of the intellectual resources of the nation needed to be mobilised to handle the fearsome scourge.

The 2009 FGN-ASUU agreement thus appeared to be jinxed, and any perceptive observer could almost accurately predict when the next conflict related to that agreement would occur. The seemingly intractable nature of the problem may have led TVC News anchor Nifemi Oguntoye to ask the President of ASUU, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, this very profound question in an interview on September 30, 2024: “Quickly, let’s talk about this 2009 Federal Government and ASUU agreement. … After 15 years and four different presidents, ASUU doesn’t think it’s time to reconsider its approach to negotiations, and perhaps explore alternative solutions to these longstanding issues? …

Some have said perhaps it’s time to strike more realistic deals rather than re-negotiating this particular one.” Furthermore, the ASUU leadership should desist from saying or doing anything that could portray it as an opposition party platform, as happened in 2022.

With respect to the students’ loan scheme, ASUU should know that it is swimming against the tide. The union should also note that the Federal Government plans to allocate 30 per cent of funds collected under TETFund to the loan scheme, a move increasingly criticised by ASUU, is adequately accommodated in the training component of the TETFund mandate.

So far, it seems that ASUU and the Federal Government have been playing games with the country’s destiny; and neither of them has come out smelling rosy from the dislocations that their conflicts have caused the nation’s university education system. It has therefore become essential for ASUU’s messianic complex and the government’s paternalistic posture to be moderated to facilitate the forging of a new conciliatory, pragmatic, sustainable and patriotic understanding which would earn anew the Nigerian university education system global competitiveness and international respect. It would be an endearing legacy if the President Bola Tinubu administration could break the jinx of university lecturers’ unending strikes and solve the seemingly intractable problems of university education in the country. (The Nation Editorial)