BY, JEFF GODWIN DOKI Ph.D
It would be appropriate to begin our discussion by recalling briefly the golden age of Nigeria as a preliminary background to our discussion. The simple reason is that since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took over the reins of government on May 29, 2023 one cannot refrain from looking back to our past, just as a maiden standing on the shore of the ocean, follows with tearful eyes her departing lover with no hope of ever seeing him again, and fancies that in the distant sail she sees the image of her beloved. And like that loving maiden, we Nigerians too have nothing but a shadowy outline left of the object of our wishes, desires and aspirations as a people. I would be quite satisfied if the virtues of the past will reanimate the present.
The period of the first regimes could be conveniently regarded today as the golden age of Nigeria. Leaders like Awolowo, Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa were able to manage and govern the country with meager resources derived basically from taxes, cocoa, groundnuts and other agricultural products. Although oil was discovered at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta region as early as 1956, its exploration was yet to commence and agriculture remained the mainstay of the economy until the end of the Nigerian civil war. During this period, the Naira was also more powerful than the Pound and Dollar.
The three biggest Universities in the country that time namely: University of Ibadan, University of Ife and Ahmadu Bello University Zaria ranked among the best Universities in the world with expatriates vying for teaching appointments in all faculties. These nationalists were aware that only education could be used for the development and liberation of man. Equally important is the fact that the first leaders of Nigeria had several things in common: patriotism and the refusal to use the resources of the state for their personal benefit.
The young Nigerian singer, Wande Coal, nostalgically captures this golden age in a song entitled Se na like this(2015). Hear him:
*Once upon a time, Dem tell us say 1 Dollar is equal to 1 Naira. *Once upon a time You go travel from Lagos to London Dem no need visa. *Once upon a time You go graduate from school and Government go dash you car *Once upon a time, You go take train from Oshodi down to Ojuelegba. *Once upon a time, Now everything do dabaru.
*Corruption is unstoppable *The hard ship is unbearable… *Lord I can not take this pain no more.
Undeniably, Wande Coal is a Nigerian artist holding up a mirror unto society and the mirror he is holding is a convex mirror. The unique value of his song could be expressed in at least three ways among others. One, he has demonstrated abundantly that pidgin is a succinct verbal art form for expressing feelings and attitudes. Two, he is a critic, a singer and a man of truth and vision. Three, by enumerating Nigeria’s train of ills his song is geared towards socio-economic liberation.
When he declares that ‘ the hardship is unbearable/ Lord I can not take this pain no more’, it is apparent that he is using his medium for social advocacy in the hope of quickening the possibility for the attainment of a better Nigeria.But it is the stanza’ Once upon a time/You go graduate from school and/ Government go dash you car’ that fascinates me most of all and this brings us the issue of education in Nigeria.
We may ask the obvious though relevant question: why is it that when you graduate from school today you cannot even get a job let alone a car? It all started after the Nigerian civil war when hundreds of billions of Naira began to accrue from the oil sector in Nigeria. This was the time the country began its descent into misery and poverty. A new ethos of cheat or risk being out-cheated had crystallized since Agriculture which sustained the nation was destroyed together with institutions and the nation’s sense of honor. Ethics, patriotism, self- respect, responsibility and vision escaped as the new leaders stashed away billions of Naira in foreign bank accounts, investment and real estate. It is twenty- six years of return to civil rule today and no genuine attempts have been made by the Nigerian leadership to provide quality education for its citizens.
The public universities are in shambles and there are about 147 Private universities in the country. There are about 52 federal universities and about 63 state universities. Nigeria is a country where universities are established not for pragmatic reasons but just to score some cheap political points. But more than that there is a deliberate attempt to destroy or privatize the public universities by the ruling elite.This trend started in the 1980s when the IBB regime introduced certain foreign Neo-liberal policies which gave rise to heavy external debt burdens, economic stagnation conjoined with rampant inflation, the material impoverishment of educational infrastructure, the massive demoralization of university teachers, skill flight etc.
Babangida was a soldier with an anti- intellectual culture. During his reign he proscribed ASUU, the union of Nigerian university teachers and had most of its members arrested, detained and brutalized. His reign was characterized by murder, repression, lies and a total neglect of the poor. But, at the same time, he hired intellectuals like Chidi Amuta and Yemi Ogunbiyi as his megaphones. He was trickish and had a penchant for telling untruths and a strong habit of deluding Nigerian citizens. For his hypocrisy and deceit he earned the sobriquet Maradona or the Evil Genius.
In February this year, he made a public presentation of his book entitled A Journey In Service: An Autobiography of Ibrahim Babangida’ in which he displayed uncommon boldness by apologizing to Nigerians about the numerous lies he told and the crimes he committed while he was in power. A good example, one can say, though coming rather late.Back to education. For more than thirty years, the Academic staff union of Universities (ASUU) has identified and combated the issue of education. The union has accused the Nigerian leadership of conserving its own dominance and monopolizing the country’s natural resources rather than improving the abject conditions of the poor. Lamentably, for the past three decades no Nigerian leader has dealt with the problem of university education seriously, sincerely, honestly and honorably.
From the 1990s to date, the rot in the University system has continued unabated; from 1990s to date the University teachers have embarked on several warning strikes and sometimes indefinite strikes all in an attempt to press the Nigerian government to tread the path of honor by respecting its promises. From Obasanjo to Jonathan, from Buhari to Tinubu ASUU and the Nigerian public has only been fed with a dish of lies and a litany of excuses.While he was campaigning as the flagbearer of the ruling All Peoples Congress, Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared on the pulpit that if he wins election there would be no more strikes in Nigerian universities. But that statement is now the grossest falsehood. And it is another good example of a dish of lies.
Tinubu has done nothing about university funding. He has done nothing about revitalizing public universities and burnishing them up to international standards. Nigerian university teachers are still owed a salary arrears of three and a half months. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is still struggling, with little success, to get the Federal Government of Nigeria to implement the renegotiated FGN-ASUU 2009 Agreement which commenced since March 2017. The issue of non-implementation of Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) has become a thorny and worrisome issue. Perhaps a brief look at the history of FGN-ASUU Agreements would be insightful. It will also reveal the sham, hypocrisy and insincerity of both past and present Nigerian governments.
The first negotiated Agreement with the Federal Government took place in 1981 under the civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. This was the agreement that established the principle of collective bargaining. The 1981 FGN-ASUU Agreement also provided a platform for resolving such important issues like special salaries and conditions of service of University teachers. In 1992, ASUU signed another Agreement with the Nigerian Government under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and the ASUU team led by Dr. Attahiru Jega, highlights of which were university autonomy, academic freedom and most importantly, a separate salary scale for Nigerian university teachers.
The last item a ‘separate salary scale’ was meant to tackle the issue of brain drain in Nigerian universities. To this must be added the fact that the 1992 agreement was to be reviewed every three years. Lamentably, the Nigerian leadership has consistently refused to do that. Of greater importance is the fact that it was the 1992 agreement that introduced the Education Tax Fund which was later transformed to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in 2011, an organ of Government which has brought massive infrastructural development to both Federal and State universities as well as Polytechnics and Colleges of Education across the country.
Again, the insincerity of the Nigerian leadership was brazenly displayed by the military Government in 1992 when it arbitrarily and unilaterally ended the negotiation headed by Prof. Umaru Shehu, an appointee of the Federal Government and the ASUU team led by Dr. Assisi Asobie. Seven years after and in 1999 precisely there was another FGN-ASUU Agreement headed by the then Nigeria’s Minister of Education Dr. Samuel Olaiya Oni. What made this agreement rather irksome is the fact that the Federal Government declared that it had no time for any comprehensive agreement with ASUU.On June 30 2001, the Federal Government signed yet another agreement with ASUU.
On the side of the Federal Government was Prof. Ayo Banjo while the ASUU team was led by Dr, Dipo Fashina. Issues of University autonomy, funding and academic freedom dominated this agreement. It took eight full years for another FGN-ASUU agreement in 2009 to replace that of 2001. The one thing which makes the 2009 agreement peculiar is the fact that it seems to be the most problematic and difficult to renegotiate. The Government team was headed by Chief Gamaliel Onosode while ASUU was represented by Dr. Abdullahi Sule who was later replaced by Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie. ASUU made series of fruitless efforts to get the government to renegotiate this very agreement.
The efforts of ASUU bore fruits in March, 2017 but sadly the Federal Government has two times turned down the two draft agreements especially the last one headed by Emeritus Prof. Nimi Briggs. By all standards, the 2017 agreement seems to be more forward-looking than previous ones because it has great promise and is aimed at addressing crucial issues like funding, salaries and welfare. The obvious implication is that Government’s refusal to accept the 2017 draft agreement is an abundant testimony of the fact that the Nigerian Government does not care about university education.
All the examples, I have enumerated, show that the Nigerian Government has a penchant for telling untruths. It is a Government of façade and sham, it is a Government of pretense and we are already cloyed with the dish of lies it serves us every day.
Jeff Godwin Doki is a Professor of Comparative Literature with the University of Jos, Nigeria.