Ade Okopi
A wo[man] reaps what s/he sows Gal 6:7b! Invariably, nothing takes place by happenstance. Implicitly, if a man plants maize, he would reap maize; if a woman plants tomatoes, she would reap tomatoes and if she happens to sow water-yam, that is what she is going to reap; she can NEVER reap yam no matter the propinquity of the two and no amount of wishful thinking, optimism or prayers can make it happen. It is just the law of nature!
It is this same law of nature that applies for development. Development does not appear from the blues; it can neither be imposed nor imported, and it is also not attained by chance or accident. Simply put, development is not a product of a miracle. To be crystal clear and blunt, none of the developed nations of the world stumbled on it/got it accidentally; they all achieved such feat by conscious and concerted planning and prodding. Development in all shades is actually the end product of education. Put differently, development, modernity or whatever moniker that it goes by is actually a harvest of the seed of education. The surest way to develop a nation is by planting the seed/stem of education no matter the cost and risk that may be involved in it. All the developed and efficient nations of modern times: Germany, UK, USA, Japan, France, Iran and even India are where they are today because they gave education to their people and usually, it comes with a price. These nations have become the sparkle of the modern world because they have all paid the dues for education. To this, there is no alternative or short cut!
What are the ills that afflict the human race today? Poverty, disease, malnutrition, terrorism, violence, crime and criminality etc, which are collectively haemorrhaging humanity to expiration, are the artefact of illiteracy. As they say, what goes around comes around. Humanity’s worst plague is neither CORONAvirus nor the Black disease, it is illiteracy/ignorance.
All I have been trying to say is in order to show the enormousness/importance of the crisis/danger that looms in the current love lost between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the FG.
It is no longer news that ASUU has downed tools for about five weeks now. The industrial action which started as a warning strike for an initial two weeks later snowballed into an indefinite action because the Federal Government was lacking in the virtue of humility to see reason why they should tow the path of conciliation and arbitration with ASUU. The Buhari government is too morally perpendicular that it cannot imagine itself kowtowing to the whims and caprices of an obstinate and a “corrupt” union that it superintends over. Why should the tail wag the dog and not the other way round? Might to them is always right and bowing to any other disparate logic is tantamount to weakness or is it “corruption sef”?
What really are the points of discrepancies between ASUU and the FG? I mean what are the issues at stake? But before then, let me strip the most ludicrous and inconsequential of them all that has been introduced into the narratives by the FG because of its sinister agenda. In this case, the so-called Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) which ordinarily is a non-issue but the FG has made it to become one in order to confuse the main issues, distract ASUU from pursuing the real issues which is to the best interest of the downtrodden masses, put the union on the defensive (lose momentum), whip up and sway public opinion to its side, hoodwink the masses and then buy them ample time to effectively and comprehensively ground tertiary education in Nigeria as they have done to primary and post-primary education. This approach of government, especially as it is a major currency of the Buhari government can no longer gain traction in the economy of ASUU. To start with on this whole IPPIS imbroglio, the idea was not even the brainchild of the “emperor” Buhari’s empire. But that does not mean if it is the right and proper thing to do, ASUU should remain indifferent to it. The policy was actually introduced by the government that this current regime took over from; and the same applies for TSA and BVN. However, when ASUU raised their concerns with the government that introduced it, which was on the grounds of the peculiarities associated with academics, that listening government obliged to the concerns of ASUU. Oh! Maybe, because that government was a “corrupt” one.
IPPIS as it is designed and configured is a software (programme) that centralises the payment schedule (voucher) of all MDA’s headed by the FG save for revenue-generating agencies like FIRS, CBN, CUSTOMS,NNPC etc.. This present government has consistently maintained that they are using this policy to fight and checkmate corruption. If we choose not to be economical with the truth, where should government beam its searchlight more on, if it sincerely wants to fight sleaze? Revenue-generating agencies or none revenue-generating agencies? Hhmnnnnnn! Truly the way to fight corruption. But again, that is not even the point. Ours is a noble profession, and accordingly, we have no business comparing and contrasting ourselves with any setup or agency of government.
Let me set the record straight. ASUU’s refusal to enroll on the IPPIS platform is not because NNPC, CBN, FIRS or whichever agency, are not on the platform and as such; why should the “all-knowing” academia enrol on the platform? Why use different strokes for different folks? That is not the concern of ASUU and by implication, we do not give a hoot as to which agency government wants to put on IPPIS or not. However, the point we are raising is that IPPIS lacks the capacity to take care of the peculiarities of universities academics. On this, ASUU has maintained that the software/platform does not have what it takes to pay for services rendered by contract and visiting lecturers, lecturers on sabbaticals, external examiners, etc. And for crying out loud, which university in Nigeria or even in the world for that matter can survive without the categories of services I just enumerated above? I know the feeling of the FG and some members of the public is that what are these university lecturers feeling like that they want us to play by their rules? Why should they dictate to us on how to go about the payment of their salaries, and more importantly, can an employee dictates the terms/conditions of service to his/her employer? These are all germane and genuine posers but it is imperative to state that the university is a different kettle of fish. It is also very crucial to state here that no university in the world is run on the basis of executive red-tape or on the rituals of officialdom. NONE! So why should ours be different? Why make us to lose our universality which is the threshold on which universities world over are founded and managed.
And so as I write, ASUU members have not been paid for three consecutive months running just because its members have failed to enrol on the IPPIS platform. But nobody is saying anything because the conduct of ASUU is overbearing and unbecoming. Even as we are not in ordinary time,s nobody has deemed it fit to raise a voice to caution the authorities that they ought to be circumspect and tactful in the way they handle this fisticuff in the present circumstance. The other day, President Buhari was captured on camera asking state governors how possible it is for them to sleep at night when their workers are not paid at the end of the month. But here we are, about 50,000 people (with hundreds of thousands of dependents) under their watch who have not been paid for the third month running but he is at the comfort of Aso Villa enjoying all the benefits of Vita-foam (or is it Polly-foam madam Aisha?) in the “other room” or is it not so Mr. President? Could this be negligence or hypocrisy? The last time the FG paid the salaries of ASUU members was in January which means that we were already in a precarious condition before the arrival of Covid-19. So in this kind of situation, what is the ideal thing to do? Even the USA, who is the harbinger of world capitalism has suddenly volte faced to become a promoter of socialism in the face of the dreaded Coronavirus. The country is busy rolling out palliative measures to the tune of, even some having up to the sum of $2,500 (N950,000; conservative estimate), and this is more than the three months’ salary of a professor in a Nigerian university. All these for the purpose of humanity. The truth is that no human being worth that specie would wish her/his worst enemy to live without cash in these precarious times. But in Nigeria, the government does not give a damn because of its puff up ego and arrogance. The whole aim is to pauperised ASUU, weaken us, bring us on our knees, and even kill us and if at all we survive, we go cap in hand before the FG.
I have good news for the Buhari and his handlers; and this is to the effect that such arm-twisting tactics would not work. What they have succeeded in doing is to strengthen our resolve and reinforce our firmness. God help the FG that we still have life in us by the end of this whole Corona brouhaha. By then we shall really know whose “agbada has been entangled in the barbed wire.”
The other day, one Sonny Echono who is the permanent secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education, confronted with the reality that IPPIS contravenes and negates the authority of governing councils on financial and personnel matters in universities, as enshrined in law, was quick to say that some policies of the government should take precedent over law. What a country! But that gaffe is a piece for another day.
But someone should tell Mr. Echono that our humanity is sacrosanct to any and all government policies put together and it doesn’t matter whether such policies were developed from the moon. This is why it is dangerous to have a caste of people suffering from moribund intelligence to navigate the ship of state. Do they actually know the number of dependents on ASUU members in this country? If not sheer hypocrisy and wickedness what then is the rationale behind this government telling the whole world that it is giving palliatives to the citizenry in the form of foodstuff and cash to the tune of 20K. Does the FG know the level of succour that would have come to her citizens by not stopping the salaries of ASUU members no matter the “crime”? The other day, the finance minister went berserk by going to [dis]informing the whole world that her principal had ordered that salaries for the month of March be paid to all FG workers as if that was an achievement. Does she expect us to begin to clap or applaud them because civil servants have been paid for the month of March which is their legitimate entitlement? Didn’t the workers merit it? When were they even asked to stop coming to work because of the Covid-19 pandemic? Is Madam Zainab Ahmed from another planet? Is she not seeing the welfarist orientation and mien of different governments the world over? Shamefully, she could not tell the world that ASUU members were not part of those to be paid. As a matter of fact, any employer that refuses to pay her employee in the face of this whole Corona pandemic no matter the level of the offence/infringement is not only wicked and callous, such an employer is evil, murderous, and cannibalistic, and it is apt to add that, such also lacks the qualities to belong to the class of Homo sapiens. Unfortunately, this is the calibre of persons that hold the ace in Nigeria today.
We are truly in interesting times! But as I said from the beginning, the thrust of this intervention is not IPPIS, in fact, to hell with it! ASUU will never enrol on the platform, not now and even in the future and the earlier the lord of the manor and his stooges get this, the better for them. We have developed UTAS and to it only we shall subscribe. They can even decide to stop our salaries for the remaining three years or so left for their reign to expire that too would not gag us. Victoria Acerta! Aluta Continua!
Let me quickly also add that since April 2019, the Federal Government implemented a minimum wage increase for all her staffers and the arrears paid up in December but as I write, none of the tertiary establishment of the FG benefitted from this salary review and no explanation has been given for this. Maybe because we go to a separate market from the rest of the people or this is another way of telling us that all the while we have been receiving spurious and undeserved salary. As I end on this, I have got one message for the emperor Buhari government: any nation that threats the men in its ivory towers (intelligentsia) with impunity and despise and disdain them, is actually on the path to self-destruct! The chicken will soon come home to roost.
Ade Okopi is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Jos, Jos.
The post FG, ASUU face-off. Facts, fallacies, falsehood appeared first on The Sun Nigeria.