ASUU STRIKE
The Federal Government, The University Management, Minister of Education or Asuu?
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is a Nigerian union of university academic staff, founded in 1978 with the sole aim to improve Academic welfare and standard of living for lecturers. Asuu strikes are embarked upon when the government refuses to uphold the agreement they made with ASUU.
YEAR PERIOD
- 1999 5 Months
- 2001 3 Months
- 2002 2 Weeks
- 2003 6 Months
- 2005. 2 Weeks
- 2006 3 Days
- 2007 3 Months
- 2008 1 Week
- 2009 4 Months
- 2010 5 Months
- 2011 59 Days
- 2013 5monthd
- 2017 1 Month
- 2018 3 Months
- 2020 9 Months
- 2022 3 Months (Ongoing)
For more than 40 years, Federal Universities in Nigeria have been scorched by strikes. On the average, every student before graduation experiences atleast two major ASUU Strikes.
The adverse effects that the resulting school closures exerts on students can not be exaggerated as it promotes despondency, as well as increase in advance fee frauds, scams, prostitution and other vices that idle youth are susceptible to and are detrimental to the society.
Furthermore, ASUU Strikes have added negative externalities as business ventures that are dependent of the existence and functioning or universities within environments are adversely affected. These are usually micro-small enterprises such as transportation services and other support services.
The cause of recurrent ASUU Strike are multi-faulted. This is not a situation where one group of people are to be blamed for the whole situation. Firstly, almost everyone points accusing fingers on the government for being the cause of the problem. Fund provided for running universities are inadequate and the salaries of university lecturers are relatively low and rarely reviewed.
Furthermore, the backlash from the newly introduced intigrated personal and payroll information system (IPPIS) platform for paying salaries have out the union (ASUU) at loggerheads with government. This is due to some perceived weaknesses and shortcomings of the platform.
The management and upper echelon university staff (which also includes some ASUU members) are not exempted from blame. In many federal universities, there is a low level of accountability on the utilisation of funds for university revitalisation from government. Furthermore, just like the political landscape of Nigeria, people lobby for positions in universities mainly for the purpose of having increased access to University funds and not necessarily to improve things in the universities.
This explains why staff (more especially academic staff) lobby heavily to be internal members of university governing councils, due to the fact that such positions gets them not to only benefit from sitting allowances but also benefit from corrupt practices that take place in selection of Vice-Chancellors.
The current model of funding Federal Universities are not sustainable. In saner climes, universities have endowments that are funded from alumni, research grants and also from large donations from wealthy alumni. Due to dwindling government revenues and mismanagement of funds, a time might come when government could stop funding universities, just as they stopped feeding students in the early 1989s. Till then, every stakeholder hope the crisis does not degenerate further.
Thank you
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