Stakeholders in the education sector are worried that the Federal Government may renege on its promised N70 billion to the Academic Staff Union of Universities ( ASUU) to end the ongoing strike, as the money is not captured in the 2021 budget to be passed by the National Assembly.
Reacting to a statement earlier by Chris Ngige, minister of labour and employment, that the government was willing to pay the agreed sum, which covers earned allowances and revitalisation infrastructure in the university system, educationists who spoke with Businessday, said such action would be a welcome development, but expressed fears how the Federal Government, which is cash strapped at the moment, plans to put their words into action when the amount in question is not captured in the 2021 budget.
The government proposed a capital expenditure of N127 billion for the ministry of education in the 2021 appropriation bill, which President Muhammadu Buhari submitted to the National Assembly.
The government also proposed N70 billion for the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and N545.10 billion as recurrent expenditure for the ministry of education.
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“It’s normal to be sceptical especially when government makes promises that are not backed by financial commitment,” said Maurice Onyiriuka, a lecturer with Imo State University. He said “to convince the university lecturers to go back to classes, the Federal Government needs to look for avenues to raise the money and dramatically shift its investment strategy towards education, going forward”.
ASUU members have been on strike since March 2020, to drive home their demands.
Christian Opata, chairman of ASUU at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), told Businessday that ASUU decided to go on the current strike because the government failed to honour the 2009 agreement and Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) it entered with the union.
“ASUU didn’t go on strike because of a misunderstanding with the government on IPPIS as platform for payment of salary.
“IPPIS issue started in 2018, before then, ASUU has been calling on the government to honour the 2009 agreement and various Mous it entered with government.
“In the 2009 agreement and Mous, the government agreed, among other things, to release the money to revitalise the decaying infrastructure in public universities and set up visitation panels to know the condition of the universities,” Opata said.
Following the long industrial action by the university lecturers, government both at the state and federal levels would be losing billions of revenue coming from paying lecturers after the strike for services not rendered as well as cost of maintaining utilities such as vehicles and generating sets in the university community.
The ripple effects, analysts noted, would be continued waste of resources for low productivity, and production of poor quality students, among others.
Aside from this loss of revenue to the universities, concerned education watchers, while analysing other effects of the industrial action, pointed out that there is also the issue of depressing effect on the quality of graduates from the universities since time lost due to strikes that should be used for delivering the curriculum is not gained after the strike, a situation they argued, accounts for the production of ‘half-baked products’.
Peter Okebukola, former executive secretary, Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), while commenting on some of the negatives of the current strike noted that as result of the incessant strikes, potential students now prefer universities in neighbouring African countries including Ghana, Benin and Togo not because of superiority of academic programme offerings but because of instability of academic calendar owing to strikes.
