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ASUU Strike: a battle between the Elites and Elitists

Published

4 years ago

on

Professor Biodun Ogunyem

 

By,

Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik
Department of Physics
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

I was reflecting over the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the response of the Government and I remembered the slogan of University of Leicester while I was there as a PhD student. “Elite without being elitist – University of Leicester”. The University picked up the slogan because Leicester was the only top-20 university in the UK that does very good research, teaching, and at the same time, was an inclusive university.

What is the difference between Elite and Elitist? Elites are best-educated, or best-trained group in a society. Elitists, on the other hand, are a group of people in a society that care not about the interests or values of ordinary people.

IPPIS:AGF’s Office Is perpetrating Fraud-ASUU

All that ASUU is struggling for is to have public universities in Nigeria that are not Elitists to groom Elites. ASUU believes that Nigerians deserve public universities with very good research and teaching activities as obtainable any where in the world, and at the same time an inclusive university that is affordable to all.

But the Elitist political office holders don’t think that should be the case. While they are aware of the bad state of the infrastructures of public universities that made them to patronize private and foreign universities for their kids, they are claiming Nigeria has got no funds to revitalize the public universities.

The government is borrowing to fund critical infrastructures but the education sector is not part of the critical institutions to fund its infrastructures. Ironically, they still profess that for the nation to get it right, we must fix education. I am still wondering how they intend to fix education without proper funding.

Meanwhile, the major headlines after the last Wednesday’s edition of the deadlocked meetings was that, “We cannot afford the N110 billion demanded by the ASUU for funding of revitalization of public universities.” (Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment).

We were told that a nation cannot develop beyond the level of education of the people and yet my country has no enough fund for the education of the people. The question then is how do we develop the nation and how critical is the education of the people to these Elitists?

Let us have a brief reminder of ASUU’s engagement with FG from 2009 with more emphasis on the revitalization of public universities.

As a follow up on the ASUU-FG agreement in 2009 during Yar’adua’s administration, the government of Goodluck Jonathan setup a committee on NEEDS Assessment of public universities in 2012 under the Chairmanship of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the then Executive Secretary of TETFund and the current Chairman of INEC.

As against the 1.1 trillion naira suggested by ASUU in 2009 for the revitalization of public universities, the NEEDS Assessment committee on the report presented to the the Federal Economic Council in 2012, recommended 1.3 trillion naira to revitalize public universities.

ASUU had to embark on strike before Jonathan’s government released the first tranche of 200 billion naira for 2013. The remaining 1.1 trillion naira was to be spread from 2014 to 2018.

When President Buhari was elected in 2015, ASUU attempted to engage the new government for several months. A strike had to be declared in 2017 before they got the attention of the government. The government agreed to release the sum of N220 billion not later than October 2017, to fund the revitalization of federal universities across the country. That money was never released among other things and another strike was declared in 2018.

The strike was suspended in 2019 after an agreement that in addition to the N20 billion commitment for 2018, the sum of N25 billion would be released in April/May 2019, after which government would resume full implementation of the of 2013 MOU.

While still expecting the implementation of 2013 MoU and the revitalization in 2019, Buhari’s government came up with the implementation of IPPIS. The same IPPIS that the FG agreed cannot work in the universities in 2014 and proposed an alternative for universities. Aside the fact that IPPIS is contrary to University Autonomy Act, the implementation will further reduce the funding of public universities.

University system does not just discard academics like a piece of rag, especially the ones found to be highly resourceful even at old age.

Some are retained as Adjunct Professors for as long as they are willing to serve. The whole idea of Visiting and Adjunct Professors in a university is a temporary measure to fill the gap of the non availability of Senior Academics to help sustain the system and also train the younger academics to get to senior cadre. And that is only possible with university autonomy where the Council, the managers of university personnel and payroll system, can use their discretion to effectively utilize the available resources to keep the system working with temporary staff pending the availability of enough tenure Lecturers at senior cadre and retired Professors that are still resourceful in selected fields.

If the university is stripped off its autonomy status and handed over to the Accountant General of the Federation (AGOF), that flexibility is lost and universities will treated like Ministries, Department and Agencies. It is either you Employ tenure staff or nothing. And if you must engage temporary academics, the university will have to source for funds to sustain that. Meanwhile, no university in world can operate effectively without Adjunct and Visiting Professors. That is how university system is designed.

ASUU is requesting that N110 billion naira should be released to the universities for revitalization as agreed in 2019 and have suggested to government ways to raise fund to complete the revitalization process, but Ngige is insisting that they can only afford N20 billion for over the 74 public universities. Meanwhile, the imposition of IPPIS with the no fund for revitalization declaration by Ngige is to further reduce the funding of the universities and stagnate the system.

What I think the public should be worried about is the sustenance of our university programs under this policy and their children’s future. If government cannot properly fund the universities, not ready to fund Adjunct and Visiting Professors, and looking for every means to reduce the funds for public universities, then the students will have to fund the system through their parents by increasing school fees.

The next question will be; how many Nigerians will be able to afford to pay a 1000% increase in registration fees? I may not know for others but with increase in the salaries of Lecturers which will surely come, Lecturers. should be able to afford it for their kids. This is just for you to realize that ASUU is “stubbornly” fighting your fight.

So, the ELITISTS whose kids are in universities in the US, UK, Turkey, Cyprus, etc., don’t want you, the ordinary Nigerian, to be exposed to quality education for reasons best known to them and ASUU is fighting to make public Universities, an Elite system, affordable to every Nigerian that wishes to acquire university education.

We have money to build Airport in states without airport, build roads, railways, and to bail out private Investments (banks and airlines), but no money to fund infrastructures in public universities. You have a choice to keep hailing your oppressor or join ASUU for the struggle or count your loss if ASUU should lose the fight. The choice is yours!

I am just a concerned ordinary Nigerian that believe in ASUU’s struggles for education and public universities.

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Deputy Senate President Distributes New Motorcycles To Barau FC Players, Officials

Published

2 weeks ago

on

October 21, 2024

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The deputy president of the Senate, Dr. Barau I. Jibrin, donated motorcycles to the Barau Football Club players and officials.

In a statement signed the club’s Media Officer Ahmad Hamisu Gwale, revealed that the distribution of the motorcycles was held on Sunday 20 October 2024, during an event at the Aztec mini stadium centre, Dangi, roundabout, Kano.

Recalling that, Barau Jibrin had on June this year (2024) promised donations of a brand-new motorcycle to each player and official of the team, in celebration of their triumph and promotion to the Nigerian National League NNL.

Speaking at the ceremony, Barau I. Jibrin, said the gesture was to ease the movements of the players and officals, with a view to boosting the welfare of the clubs.

Represented by his chief of staff, Professor Muhammad Ibn Abdullahi, the deputy president of the Senate, reiterated his commitment to contribute and making the club self-reliant.

“This is not the first, and it will not be the last. By Allah’s grace, he will continue to carry out our intervention programmes to enable our people to be self-reliant,” Mr Abdullahi said.

In his remarks, the Barau FC Chairman Ibrahim Shitu Chanji, thanked Barau Jibrin for his endavors commitment to the club.

He also commended the Deputy President of the Senate for his commitment to football development in Kano and the country.

Najib Yusuf, while speaking on behalf of the players, thanked Barau Jibrin, satisfied to play for the Barau Football Club, commited to admiring being part of the team.

The distribution ceremony, attendent by Shawwal Barau Jibrin, the President of the Barau FC, Professor Abdullahi Shehu Ma’aji, managing director of North West Development Commission NWDC.

Also, the event had gatherd thousands of the Deputy President of the Senate aids, supporters, and well-wishers were all attendance.

 

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Muslim-Muslim Ticket: idea fixation pathetic, religion be excluded in politics and governance, says El-Rufai

Published

2 years ago

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June 11, 2022

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The Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, has described the possibility that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, would run a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the 2023 presidential election as mere speculation.

Making a remark on Channels TV’s political show, Politics Today, he said, Nigerians’ obsession with religion – when it comes to voting – rather than competence is sad. “This fixation of Nigerians on religion instead of competence, capacity, and capability is quite sad and pathetic.”

El-Rufai said that anyone asking him questions about the controversial Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket is asking the wrong person, because, in the 2019 general election he settled for a qualified Muslim woman as a running mate and won the election in Kaduna State.

He said, “I don’t look at people from Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian angle. Most of my closest friends are Christians. It was Pastor Tunde Bakare, a Pentecostal pastor, that took me to the CPC, not President Buhari. I’m very close to Bakare. I’m very close to many Christians. I don’t think the business of governance has anything to do with religion. I think we should look for the best person for the job. A person that will get the job done and let him do that.”

He advised Nigerian journalists to keep religion out of politics and government. He said, “I don’t think we should be looking at religion. We want to develop this country. When I get into a plane, I don’t ask about the religion of the pilot. When I go to the hospital, I don’t ask for the doctor’s religion of the doctor, I just want to get well. I just want to get to my destination when in an aircraft.

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Nigerian Universities, the interference of Professional bodies, and the time bomb

Published

3 years ago

on

November 4, 2021

By

Having worked with multidisciplinary teams during my PhD at the Department of Engineering of the University of Leicester and postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Electric Power Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), I decided to experiment the acceptability of a multidisciplinary team in Engineering departments in Nigerian universities in 21st century on my return in 2015. Then, I was already due to be a Senior Lecturer in ABU since 2014. So I sent my CV and an application letter for the position of Associate Professor to the VC through the Head of Electrical Engineering Department of one of our public universities in November 2015. And I received the following not very surprising reply.
“Having perused your application documents, I found them interesting and relevant to the need of the department. However, I cannot pass your application for further processing because of the post applied for. For your information, the Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nig. (COREN) has fixed the bar of an Engineering lecturer who is not registered with COREN at Lecturer I regardless of the number of his/her publications.”
The question that came to my mind was that is the regulation of engineering lecturers in universities part of the mandates of COREN? I read the reply again and he was very emphatic on my PhD and postdoctoral research experience and the relevance to his department. I was made to understand that the University has no academic staff in the area of high voltage engineering, but for them to utilize my experience in high voltage engineering, if I was actually ready to move there, I have to accept to be demoted for 4 years because COREN said so. And I can’t grow no matter my research output till I am registered with COREN. Amazing offer! It will take a complete idiot to accept such an offer. That is the reality of the compartmentalization of our university system and the destruction of the Nigerian university system and the structure by supposed professionals.
This was completely different from my experience in my two universities in Europe. Prof. Len Dissado had a first degree in chemistry and a PhD in chemistry but was a Professor of Engineering at Leicester because his research area was in Dielectrics, a topic very relevant to High Voltage Engineering. He was retained as Emeritus when I left in 2012. Dr. Steve S. Dodd had his first degree in Physics and PhD in Physics but was employed as a Senior Lecturer in Engineering (High Voltage Engineering group) because his research area was in Electrical insulation materials. He retired as a Reader in High Voltage Engineering. The HoD of the Electric Power Engineering as at the time I left the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2015 had a PhD in Physics and was a Professor of Electric Power Engineering. Universities in the rest of the world are closing gaps, while we are widening the gap. Since I could not close the gap, so we decided to have a High Voltage Laboratory in the Physics department.
In universities, we are academics and research workers. Irrespective of the field, we are employed to teach and do research. The yardstick for evaluating your performance is research output. Engineering graduates in academia are not left out. They are not employed as Engineers. Universities have their Engineers to do the engineering work. As an academic, you can be COREN registered to enable you to practice outside the university but not for the classroom and research labs in the university. I once asked a colleague some years back if as a university worker, he is an Engineer for real or a teacher and he was silent. I asked about the value of COREN registration in his teaching of Engineering courses, research output, and student project supervision and he could not give me a straight answer.
I still find it weird that COREN, a body regulating practicing engineers on the field is now setting standards for promotion in the Engineering departments of Nigerian universities. They will soon be telling Nigerian universities what to teach and what not to teach. The other councils of professionals will soon follow to set what they perceived as standards for the respective faculties or departments.
The interference of the Councils of professionals in the affairs of Nigerian universities has grown beyond setting promotion guidelines. They are now deciding the establishment of faculties and the duplication of academic departments. It does not matter the burden of running such faculties and departments on the universities. I am still wondering how they are able to twist the hands of NUC and the universities’ Senate and Governing Council to achieve all that. Not long ago, the Faculty of medicine in Nigerian public universities were converted to Colleges of Medical Sciences with 4 faculties and several departments, thanks to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria.
What baffled me was the fact that the Department of Biochemistry, for example, that has taught medical students the biochemistry they know since the inception of the study of medicine in Nigerian universities is suddenly no more qualified to teach medical students because the Lecturers do not have a degree in medicine. Very amazing! We now have duplicated Biochemistry departments across Nigerian universities that they called “Medical Biochemistry” in the college of medicine. The “medical biochemistry” will possibly be taught by the Medical Doctors based on what they learned from the Biochemists in life science while in medical school. Could this be a case of trading quality for ego?
We also, for example, have a medical microbiology department in the college of medicine, a microbiology
department in the faculty of life science, and a vet microbiology department in the faculty of Veterinary medicine.
The microbiologists will be able to explain to us the difference between the different versions of the microbiology.
I was in Norway in 2014 when the Norwegian couple at NTNU shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with a Professor at the University College London (UCL). I tried to check the structure of these 2 universities. The faculty of medicine at NTNU has no biochemistry department. The Department of Biotechnology and Food Sciences, a replica of the Biochemistry department, is in the faculty of natural science and they provide service to the faculty of Medicine as we had before the coming of the colleges of medicine in Nigerian universities.
How the increased number of departments helping to improve the quality of our academic output is what I can’t figure out. Rather than the duplication of service departments that will only increase the number of academic departments and won’t really add much value to the system but increased running cost, we should have created a college of life sciences and pulled the relevant faculties and departments into it.
Individualistic research is going extinct and most of the novelties of the 21st century are from interdisciplinary researches. One of the winners of the 2014 Nobel prize in medicine John O’Keefe is a neuroscientist in the Faculty of life sciences at the UCL with his degrees in Psychology. But the others, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser are both neuroscientists from the Faculty of Medicine at NTNU and received their first degree from the Department of Psychology and PhD in neurophysiology at the Faculty of Medicine in Oslo.
There is nothing more fascinating than the fusing of different ideas together to produce a unique product. That is the exploration in the 21st century. The world has left us behind in individualistic ideology and moved into multidisciplinary academics. If we must make progress in our universities, we must break our erected artificial barriers that are keeping us apart. The academics in physical sciences and engineering must come together with possibly a research centre that is into cutting-edge research that will involve research groups from all the relevant departments. Same way to bring life science and medical complex together.
I have seen graduates of mathematics that became Professors of Econometrics in Economics departments in universities in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. I have seen a graduate of Chemistry that became a Professor of Engineering in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. I have seen a graduate of Physics that became a Professor of Electric Power Engineering in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. In Nigeria, I have seen Engr (Prof) XXX boldly written on our doors in the department but not in the universities in Europe. Are we having an identity crisis?
Professional bodies that are supposed to focus on the regulation of Professionals in the field should focus on their mandate and not be given free hands to change University policies as it pleases them. If we don’t end their interference, just like the medical council, COREN could wake up one day to tell our universities that there is a need for colleges of Engineering with departments of mathematics and physics to service the college because those in Mathematics and Physics departments are not qualified to teach engineering students because they don’t have engineering degrees. Vet council, Pharmaceuticals council, builders council, architects council, Quantity surveyors council, etc, may follow. So, how are we going to handle that?
Let’s stick to the founding principles of the university. Universities have world standards. We can stick to our British standard or borrow a leaf from the world’s top universities to improve our system, instead of allowing professional bodies to manipulate us and create barriers within the university system that will further slow down the progress we are to make.
Our universities are not in it’s best form and we have to do what we have to do to improve them. We should be more preoccupied with that. We should be discussing how to reposition Nigerian universities to be able to stand up to our various challenges and not duplicate departments without facilities because some Councils of professionals said so.
Finally, to my colleagues in Electric power engineering or high voltage engineering in Nigerian universities, you are welcome to experience our High Voltage Materials Laboratory in the Department of Physics, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. We have a 400 kV DC generator and 100 kV AC source with a partial discharge measurement system to serve you. Join us to learn the physics of electric power equipment. We do not have barriers!

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