By Abdelgafar Amoka
Some colleagues at home and in the diaspora that can’t stand ASUU have decided to pick up a new job to portray ASUU as the bad guy and the major problems of public universities rather than a solution.
They ascribed the mischievous and unfortunate activities of few academics in the universities to ASUU and claimed that these elements that should ordinarily have no business being in academics are shielded by ASUU.
They are also of the opinion that there are no quality thoughts and research in our universities. Meanwhile, they are divided in the quality of teaching in public universities. While some of them are of the opinion that the quality of undergraduate teaching is still good as our graduates are still able to cope during their postgraduate studies abroad, some insisted that Nigerian lecturers are bad from head to toe.
I will always use my nearly 16 years of experience in Academia to tell our story. There are quality thoughts in the form of good proposals on issues affecting our immediate society.
A researcher is expected to find solutions to problems in his immediate society first. But a good proposal is just a good idea on paper if there is no fund to execute them. As an Academic, I am not expected to use my salary that is barely enough to feed us for research. I am actually supposed to be made very comfortable to get the job done and funds are supposed to be available to assess on a fairground for research purposes, but that is sometimes not the case.
The government is supposed to engage their intellectuals and place policy-driven demands on them. But the government only puts money where some individuals have personal interest without any much expectations on output. Can you imagine that there is a budget for research for ministries but not for universities.
What research are they into at the ministries? I keep mentioning “cause and effect”. We seems to have place much emphasis on “effect” without much reference to the “cause”. Not much of impactful research is going on in our universities as expected because the relevant stakeholder has not created that structure.
No adequate provision for funds for that purpose. The drivers of our government agenda and policies prefer to buy a solution from abroad no matter the cost instead of engaging their intellectuals. That complex that anything from oyinbo land (abroad) is superior is still very much there.
The question is this; are the lecturers responsible to fund structures for research or the owner and the financier of the university? What makes a laboratory is not the space but the facilities in it. No organization will give you money to fill the space you call a lab to do research work for them. It is the facilities that you already have that will convince them that you have the capacity to do their research.
While I was in the UK, we use to have industrialists and potential collaborators visit our lab to see what we had to drive collaboration. When I got a scholarship for my PhD and I needed a university in the UK for it, I just googled “High Voltage Laboratories in the UK” and5 universities with that facilities pop up. I took the scholarship money to one of the universities. That is one of the issues ASUU is fighting for. Revitalization of public universities to put in place those facilities that will make it possible to effectively carry out research and teaching. Such facilities will also serve as a source of foreign exchange.
I still remember the university congregation that took place in 2008 where a member of the congregation asked of the budget for research. And I think the response then was that no budget for research but that he has set aside 10 million naira for research. I was a PhD student at the university then. The 10m naira if given to only me was not enough to acquire the facilities for my PhD research before luck came my way with the scholarship that took me out. No provision for research in the university budget and the VC possibly set aside that 10 million from the internally generated fund. That is the level the policymakers have placed the universities. Just a teaching institution but they still blame the university for not doing research.
When I got back from the UK, I prepared a proposal that was sent to the VC. Thinking the university will be able to source for funds to execute the project. The next day, i got a call for an invitation from the VC to make a presentation of the proposal to the university management.
He was very impressed after the presentation and made motivating comments. At the end of the meeting, he asked me to put in some things and return the proposal to him. The proposal died a natural death after leaving his office. I sent the same proposal to NASENI, a government agency. The email response was that they will see what they can do and nothing till today. After discussion with some friends, contact was made to Sam Amadi, the then Head of NERC. He requested I send the proposal. I emailed it to him and never got a response till today. All these happened in 2013.
Then I left for a postdoc in Norway in September 2013. I continued the quest for a grant on my return in September 2015 and that same proposal eventually won the 2019 TETFund NRF research grant and we are working on it presently. Meanwhile, before the grant, I started crowdfunding among family and friends in 2018. I was able to raise about 1.4 million naira to buy a few stuff for my lab. Is that how to create a research environment? How many people are ready to go this extra to raise money from his family and friends for a university lab just to have facilities to work with?
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To the best of my knowledge, the financier is supposed to put up the structure and you use the structure to get grants to sustain the research activities and even make money for the university and foreign exchange from international students. Where is the infrastructure to challenge us? our universities have lecturers trained in the UK, US, Europe, China, Russia, etc. Rather than engaging us, they hire consultants abroad, a case study of the Malaysian economic consultants in 2017, to solve our local problem and pay them in USD.
But then, even with the limited funds, the universities are still making frantic efforts to put in place research facilities. ABU for example, has Multiuser science laboratories, NLNG multiuser laboratory in Engineering, the Biotech Centre, the African Centre of Excellence for Neglected Tropical Diseases, the recently established high voltage materials laboratory in the physics department, etc. With all these constraints, we have Professors and middle career academics in ABU with research grants, 20 to over a hundred articles in index journals, and a Scopus h-index from 7 to 20. There are quite a number of them in ABU. Our efforts despite the harsh environment should be commended.
You can’t keep telling me the country doesn’t have the money to make provision for research funds for universities in our budget. The international community believes that we have the money. That was the reason why they took Nigeria off the list of “education least developed countries” and researchers in Nigeria are not qualified for the 15,000 USD TWAS research grant for basic sciences. I got the grant in 2013 and while trying to reapply in 2016, I discovered that applicants from Nigeria are no longer qualified.
I sent an email in January 2018 to a senior colleague (British) at National Grid UK that I want to establish a high voltage lab in my university in Nigeria. And his response was that; “Abdel, it’s like you like to take on tough challenges. Starting a high voltage lab from nothing is a tough one”. I take on the tough challenge with my colleagues with personal efforts, personal funds, and begging. The photo is one of the facilities in our lab.
Of course, not everyone can go that extra mile and you can’t fault them. You are employed and supposed to be given what you need to work. You are not supposed to go that extra and even turn to a beggar just to get what you need to perform some of your responsibilities as an Academic. This is our story!
So, who do we blame? The FG (the financier) who is the “cause” and still establishing more universities without a funding plan, or the ASUU’s struggle for the survival of public universities which is the “effect”? What we’ve got is surely not good enough and we need to do more. So, if you can’t come to join us to rebuild the system, don’t condemn us but encourage us and offer the necessary support.
Meanwhile, if you know any Lecturer that is into sexual harassment, sex-for-mark, money-for-mark, extortion of students, admission racketeering, etc, in any university, report him to the management of that university and copy ASUU local branch and even the ASUU National president and watch if he is shielded.
If you refused to make such reports or take the necessary actions to stop such ills in our universities and decided to go to Facebook to blame ASUU like the “Professor” from Benue State University, Markudi, then you are part of the problem.
