2013 the year of ASUU

The concept of Man of the Year (changed to Person of the Year in 1999) was developed by Time Magazine in 1927 to recognise and feature a person, group, idea or object that “for better or for worse…has done the most to influence the events of the year.”

It took me only a few minutes to decide that there was no single person in Nigeria in 2013, who “influenced the events of the year” to the point of being named Man of the Year. True, there were notable individuals who made significant splashes, but there were even more interesting developments for which groups of individuals were responsible. Although each of the developments was specific to a particular sector of our national life, many citizens were affected beyond those sectors. The four major developments, which dominated the news “for better or for worse” in 2013, are: Corruption in the economic sector; terrorism in the security sector; 2015 politics in the political sector; and the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities in the education sector. Most events in 2013 were influenced by one or more of these developments.

Corruption scandals dominated the economy in 2013, despite reported gains in economic growth. The scandals included the fuel subsidy scam; the Stock Exchange scam; the pension scheme fraud;Oduahgate; record high extrabudgetary spending of N1.17trn in Service Wide Vote; and lavish spending on housing, transport, entertainment, and transport especially by the executive and legislative branches of government. So dominant was corruption throughout the year that it occupied centre stage in the letters to President Goodluck Jonathan by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Governor of the Central Bank, Lamido Sanusi, as well as a highly charged public statement by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal. Besides, many editorials and columns highlighted corruption and its effects throughout the year.

If the disclosures by highly placed Nigerians and the press are considered political (which some of them certainly are), what about the finding by the Transparency International in the 2013 Corruption Perception Index, which rates Nigeria among the most corrupt nations in the world? In any case, no one needs to wait for the CPI rating to recognise the debilitating effects of corruption at federal, state, and local levels on infrastructure, education, health care, and citizens’ welfare.

The lust for a share of the national cake by hook or crook by the top one per cent has produced an “it-is-our-turn-to-chop” political philosophy, which underlies most political struggles at federal, state, and local levels. That’s why posturing for the 2015 presidential election by various politicians began in earnest during the second half of 2013. Today, 2015 politics is defined by several related events, including the Nigerian Governors’ Forum chairmanship election; the Show of Shame in the Rivers State House of Assembly; the shenanigans associated with the election of the national executive for the Peoples Democratic Party; the coalition of several minority parties to form the All Progressives Congress; the split within the PDP; the formation of the “New PDP” and the defection of aggrieved party members, including governors and legislators, to the APC; Obasanjo’s letter to Jonathan, the latter’s response, and numerous reactions to them. It has been suggested that these developments underlie Jonathan’s reluctance in replacing sacked ministers since September because he no longer knows who to trust.

The critical question is: If the polity began to “heat up” in 2013 ahead of the 2015 election, what kind of election would we have? This is where the third development listed above comes in. It will be recalled that Jonathan’s election in 2011 was preceded by physical and verbal thuggery and followed by the worst post-election violence in the nation’s history. His subsequent inauguration ushered in the escalation of terrorist activities. Wanton killings and the destruction of property by Boko Haram continued even after the offer of amnesty and the declaration of a state of emergency in three Northern states. Today, the nation remains insecure as armed robbers, kidnappers, pirates, and pipeline vandals continue to piggyback on the government’s inability to curb terrorism. The Fund for Peace, which publishes the Failed States Index annually, sees these developments as indications of the state’s inability to control its territory. In the 2013 FSI, the loss of territorial control, corruption, poor infrastructure, poor governance, and inadequate provision of necessary political goods, pushed Nigeria to the league of war-torn countries on the verge of failure.

While the three developments discussed above, namely, corruption, 2015 politics, and terrorism, continue to have debilitating effects on the state and its citizens, the fourth development brought mixed blessings. It is the ASUU strike, which kept millions of students out of public universities for nearly six months. Since politicians, policymakers, and even many of the striking professors send their children to private universities at home or to foreign universities abroad, the burden of taking care of the students evacuated from university campuses during the strike fell largely on farmers, artisans, market women, petty traders, and other working class families, whose children predominate in public universities. Yet, these are the parents most affected by the economic strangulation caused by corruption, poor infrastructure, and weak governance.

Incidentally, these same factors are responsible for the government’s neglect of the education sector, which, in turn, precipitated ASUU’s strike. To ASUU’s credit, the strike succeeded in two significant ways. First, for the first time in history, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was dragged to the negotiating table. Second, the Federal Government committed over N1tn over four years to the development of infrastructure and other necessary facilities in public universities, beginning with an initial deposit of N200bn with the Central Bank of Nigeria. At the end of the day, the fruit of the strike is expected to boost the quality of higher education in the country, provided the Federal Government keeps its promise.

It is this expected positive contribution to the development of higher education in the near future that inspired me to name ASUU, the Man of the Year 2013. But this is a crown ASUU must wear with the utmost caution as the ball has now fallen into the court of university teachers to also make their own contribution. They must become ready and effective teachers. True, things will not change overnight with the poor facilities now in place. However, the time for university teachers to begin to change their attitude to work is now. Simultaneous employment in two, three, or more universities must stop. Teaching without prepared lectures must stop. Sex for grades must stop.

There is also another challenge before ASUU. If the Federal Government keeps its part of the agreement, public sympathy will be hard to come by in the near future should ASUU embark on another strike. It is therefore necessary for ASUU to develop a strategy, other than a strike, for getting the government