All Manner Of Strike Is Biblical....President Goodluck Jonathan Laments
He said that the earliest accounts of strike actions are found in the Old Testament, although dates are uncertain, as are the result. In the Genesis 11: 9, workers building the Tower of Babel quit their project after God (Yahweh) decrees that people will have many languages other than one. In Exodus 5: 7, another form of strike is apparently recorded when Pharaoh tells the Hebrew brick makers they will not receive more straw from him and must keep producing “bricks without straw”...........
That is exactly the same decree President Goodluck Jonathan is reeling out to all the striking unions in Nigeria: “Work without enhancement”. Certainly, this is not the best of times for the President. The seemingly clueless government is grappling with typhoon of industrial actions; left of right and right of the centre. The gales of strikes perfectly match the saying in my part of the world that, “If the drum deadens its feelings to the hammering effect of sticks, it must certainly bear the pounding impart of stone.”
You will agree with me that these strikes are overdue. The downward educational slide is such that will create panic amongst followers of these mushroom institutions as to whether the leadership of this nation mean well for the citizens. Shamefully enough, none of the nation’s universities ranks amongst the best 30 in Africa!
An international online universities and colleges ranking directory, www.4icu.org, has published its current top 100 Universities and Colleges in Africa. The top 10 on the list are universities from South Africa and Egypt while other universities from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Ghana, Morocco and even Sudan lead favourably against six Nigerian universities that appear on the ranking.
The six Nigerian universities that appear in the top 100 are the University of Ibadan at the 32nd position; University of Ilorin, 34th; University of Benin, 40th; Obafemi Awolowo University Ife, 44th; Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, 62nd; and University of Jos, 70th position. No Nigerian private university or college made the list. With these findings, no one needs sorcerers or stargazers to know that our universities and colleges are breeding grounds for mediocrity and incubation of illiteracy.
Strikes take place in order to put pressure on the state or other authorities which as a response to unsafe conditions in the workplace, in most cases. Apart from being a clarion call that create a national emergency, they also serve as a means of educating the public about a country’s economic system. In other words, a strike action is a continuation of collective bargaining by other methods as much as war is a continuation of diplomacy by other methods.
The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers just ended its three days warning strike which jotted the Presidency to its bone marrow over a plethora of unkept agreements it entered into with the oil union to maintain and build new refineries, rehabilitate old roads and build new ones across the country for easy transport of petroleum products in the absence of a functional rail system amongst many other demands. NUPENG is also championing the removal of the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, who it accuses of corruption and incompetence in that sector. The union’s warning strike so terrified the Federal Government that it quickly caved in and opted to meet its demands as soon as possible. However, it remained adamant, after the meeting, saying it would still shut down the oil sector if government did not fulfil its promises after 60 days.
On its part, the Petroleum and National Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria has threatened to embark on strike if government fails to honour and address the ultimatum issued by them. As we speak, the Nigerian Union of Teachers is still on strike in some states across the country for similar reasons. Strike action has always been a permanent feature of labour relations when workers feel their situation to be intolerable and exploitative.
Now, in what could be described as a near collapse of the nation’s tertiary education sector, the Academic Staff Union of Universities is now in the first month of its indefinite strike action. ASUU’s strike is the newest cart in the bandwagon of industrial actions in the sector. The academic and non-academic staff unions in Nigerian polytechnics, under the umbrellas of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Polytechnics and the Non-Academic Staff Union, only called off, a few days ago, their nationwide indefinite strike, over what they termed Federal Government’s insensitivity to their plight after three months!
The Chairman of the University of Lagos chapter of ASUU, Dr. Karo Ogbinaka, told reporters recently that the action was as a result of the Federal Government’s failure to honour the Academic Earned Allowance which formed a component of the 2009 agreement the government signed with the union. His words: “The allowances include; excess workload, high carriage of student per lecturer, responsibility allowance ranging from administrative responsibility borne by lecturers. For example, as a head of department, deans of faculties, exams officers, course advisers and supervisors of theses. The highest any lecturer gets from this allowance is N12,500 per month. The truth is that since 2009, no lecturer has been paid any allowance apart from the salaries.”
He explained that when this non-payment of allowances was brought to the notice of the Federal Government, government authorities said that they forgot to include it in the 2013 budget, pleading to make amends in subsequent years. The situation has, however, remained the same since 2009. Before the commencement of the strike, Ogbinika noted that the union had several meetings with the Federal Government on this issue. “We went ahead to give them warning strike and they never did anything to avert the industrial action,” he said.
“We had a series of interactions with the Federal Government at the national level, but to the dismay of ASUU, the Federal Government recently came up with a new position that it can’t pay more than 50 per cent; an amount that has been reduced to 80 per cent by the union. Between December 2010 and January 2011, the union suspended its industrial action over ASUU/FG agreements. Within the period, the union had a series of meetings with the Federal Government.”
The conscious awakening from the striking unions are commendable and should be lauded by anyone who wants Nigeria to catch up with other nations in pursuing the Millennium Development Goals target for total education. We need to encourage the striking unions. If care is not taken, President Goodluck Jonathan and his minders will sink the nation’s ship. The same people who tell us that Nigeria has a robust and strong economy are the ones telling us that from October, 2013, the government may have problems paying workers’ salaries/allowances. Why would government be unable to pay wages as from October if the economy is robust and healthy as the Minister of Finance, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, claims? Something is definitely wrong somewhere.
Now this: How do we explain that the Federal Government is unable to fulfil an agreement that was signed in 2009 with stakeholders in the tertiary institutions four years down the road? Nigerians are not amused with the level of abysmal performance of students in their examinations and other academic endeavours. How then do we achieve our goal as a nation to enter the club of 20 leading countries in the world when education — one of the yardsticks for measuring the standard of any successful economy — is virtually nonexistent?
The unions are sending the right messages to the arm-twisting President that it is better to face the actual business of governance than to be entangled in the politics of brinkmanship and stone-walling. It has become clearer by the day that President Jonathan is far from possessing the panacea for the nation’s litany of problems. Any hope for the country? Sadly, these industrial actions are taking place in an administration where the sitting President is a former university teacher.
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