By Msonter Anzaa
It’s over four months since the Academic Staff Union of Universities went on strike in the South-East over improved pay. The strike has lasted so long that media attention has shifted away from it and the governments of the South-Eastern States have carried on with business as usual. The consequences of the strike include uncompleted semesters, disrupted examinations, unending sessions and most important of all, a heavily burdened and virtually collapsed educational system.
Agitations for improved pay have recently become very popular in the academic world in Nigeria. Last year, three Unions in the University system went on strike demanding upward review of their pay and more committed funding of the system. Three Months of protests, negotiations, accusations and counter accusations passed before universities were reopened. The argument at that time was that in line with the principle of federalism, the Federal Government could not impose a salary on the states as what they must pay their workers. Soon, the states bought into the argument and complicated matters by insisting some of them were not able to pay what the Federal Government had agreed to pay its workers. I thought the argument about federalism was diversionary. It was just about the Federal Government of Nigeria deciding to set the standard for Universities in the country. Just like the National Universities Commission ensures that all universities in Nigeria meet certain infrastructural and manpower standards, the Federal Government could decide that all professors in Nigerian Universities must be paid at least, a certain minimum amount. All proprietors, whether they are states, local governments or individuals, who want to establish universities would then have to meet these standards. But the federalism argument dragged on and is partly responsible for the disaster in the South-East.
