| IN SEARCH OF A PAN NIGERIAN ACADEMIC COMMUNITY BY Dr. Segun Osoba FOREWORD The 10th Nationals Conference of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was held on the hallowed grounds of the premier university institution in Nigeria which also happened to be the founding venue of our union. It was held against the background of serious and sustained assaults from successive dictatorial regimes supported by a fascistic ruling class on the principle of academic freedom and university autonomy-the cardinal tenets of the University Idea-in Nigeria. The conference took place at a time when the Nigerian economy was in deep crisis and its polity in a state of advanced decay. It came at a time when truly the temple was in crisis and the tower had, indeed, become less than ivory. But that was also a period when there was a clear determination on the part of the vast majority of the members of ASUU to ensure that the University Idea in Nigerian was enthroned, entrenched, protected against all assaults, and sustained against all odds. The theme Sustaining the University Tradition was, therefore, chosen to reflect this contradiction: impoverished academics struggling to bring hope to a benighted nation: the beacons of light whose illumination had begun to dim and flicker, struggling stoically to continue serving as guiding lights to a people in the dark alleys of developmental morass. Dr Segun Osoba, a person who for many years has been at the centre of the struggle to build and entrench the university of tradition in Nigeria was chosen by our union to play the key note at the conference. In his lecture, he brought his characteristic intellectual rigour to the sub-theme: In search of a pan-Nigerian academic community. In the process he threw much light on the notion of university tradition. He also exposed the dialectical context within which the contending social forces have, through their overt and hidden struggle, become involved in the process of the creation and destruction of the basis of a common Nigerian university tradition of our dream. Dr Osoba further proposed and discussed with great analyti9cal clarity a five-state plan of development from the formal legal conceptualization of the University Idea to the creation of a university tradition worth sustaining. And with respect to our union, he advised thus: ASUU must jealously guard the integrity and unity of its organization, the tradition of its organization, the tradition of solidarity and mutual support on major issues of public concern, with support, and empathy from which the union had drawn in the recent past. The national delegates of ASUU benefited tremendously from Dr. Osoba lecture. I am sure that the Nigerian intellectual community, in particular and the Nigerian literate public in general will earn a lot from this published version of the lecture. In Search of a Pan-Nigerian Academic Community Introductory Remarks ASUU President, Dr. Assisi Asobie, members of ASUU National executive Council, delegates to the NDC, distinguished ladies and gentlemen; it was with great pleasure and almost indecent alacrity that I accepted your invitation to be the guiest lecturer at today opining of the 10th National Delegates Conference of our Union. However, having accepted the invitation, I then quickly discovered that there was nothing I could truthfully and credibly talk to you about that is germane to the theme of this conference: Sustaining the University Tradition. You cannot imagine the agonizing, even traumatic experience K have had in the last three to four weeks while searching for a suitable topic within this problematic theme to address you on. My main problem has been that I could not place my finger on this animal called the university tradition which your chosen theme invokes with magisterial cocksureness. My own understanding of the term tradition is something like a clearly recognizable body of laws, customs, conventions, values, and practice hallowed by time and precedents within a family, institution, community, or country. I am not aware that the business of our universities in Nigeria, severally or collectively, is conducted in accordance with a common, clearly recognizable and generally accepted tradition that can be called The Nigerian University tradition, especially at it is a notorious fact that even within each university institution, the dominant form of decision-making is the ad hoc and ad hominem type, our rules of engagement varying wildly with the particular occasion and person concerned. It also occurred to me that the theme might be suggesting not an established, but evolving tradition within the Nigerian university system. Again, I failed to see such a fledgling, developing tradition, unless what is represented by ASUU heroic, but spasmodic and unequal struggle against local campus tyrants and national purveyors of state terrorism in an effort to ensure that the universities are kept open and operating even at their severely impaired and abysmally low level of efficiency. From my very long association with ASUU struggle, I am only too well aware that thanks to the apathy and irresoluteness of many of our members the struggle is often of most of its steam and trust often acquiring the form of one step forward, two backward. It did, however, occur to me that the term university tradition might be referring to the British or Western notion of university institution which was given formal legal reality in Ibadan (1948), Nsukka (1960), Zaria, Lagos, Ife (1962), and in all the subsequent generations of Nigerian universities, both state and Federal. But I quickly dismissed this idea, because this notion of the university as a corporate body of scholars and student which is committed to the pursuit of knowledge and its dissemination in the spirit of academic freedom, is publicly funded, and enjoys considerable autonomy in its local governance, has gained little acceptance among university scholars, especially the most senior ones, and even less among government leaders who have a vested interest in subjecting the universities to their own political and bureaucratic control. So, I came to the rather pessimistic conclusion that since we did not as yet have a common university tradition in Nigeria, we were not in a position to even begin to sustain it. I, however, recognized that I could not confront you with such a blatantly pessimistic conclusion, especially at this critical juncture when you are poised for a renewed offensive to salvage our battered universities form the dead hands of their would be custodians. I do acknowledge that even though we have not as yet created a common Nigerian university tradition of our dreams, its creation at the earliest possible time is of paramount importance if we are going to be able ultimately to sustain the idea of the university among us. Consequently, I have decided to expose with you the process by which we can most speedily create a common tradition of university education, which will take full advantage of suitable foreign borrowings, in terms of norms, conventions, and methodology carefully blended with, and rooted in our culture to create a recognizably Nigerian university tradition that will be relevant to our people needs, concerns, and aspirations and will be capable of constant self-renewal and upgrading. In embarking on this crucial enterprise, I suggest a five-stage plan of development from the formal-legal conceptualization of the university idea to the creation of a university tradition worthy of sustaining and capable of serving as the fountainhead of ideas, norms, values, and conventions for nurturing the university system, guiding its development, and defending its vital interests into the indefinite future. Stage 1 involves the formal legal formulation of the university idea, including the enactment of legal norms, constitutional rules and structures clearly spelling our the aims, Objectives, functions, and mode of governance and operation of the proposed university. Stage 2 Concerns the building or provision of appropriate and adequate physical sturctures for concretely situating the university idea as conceived in stage one. Stage 3 is about stetting up an \embryonic academic community by recruiting suitable academic and nonacademic personnel and students within the pre-established legal and physical frameworks in order to operationalize the university idea and launch it, hopefully, on the path of self sustaining growth and development. Stage 4 is the most critical stage and encompasses the progressive domestication of the idea of the university over time within the constantly evolving academic community. This domestication takes place in the process of the formal and informal interactions among its scholars, and between it scholars and other groups and bodies (like nonacademic staff, students, industry, the professions, governors, the government, and the public at large) in situations of work and play, cooperation and conflict. It is in such situations and within such a process that the legal and ethical norms, social and cultural values, and notions of scholarship and academicstandards, on which the idea of the university was founded, are tested, modified and refined. This process of constant modification and refinement continues until thee emerges a coherent body of rules, conventions, guidelinesetc. which are subscribe to by all members of the community, or at least an overwhelming majority, as the basis of behaviour within the academic community and between it and the outside world. It is only at this point, when the life of the academic community is guided by such a clearly established set of rules and principles, almost in the manner of a conditioned reflex, that we can begin to talk of the existence of a or even the university radition in Nigeria. In short, a viable and vibrant academic community is the matrix within which a durable and sustainable university tradition can be forged. Stage 5 is the stage par excellence of the constant and ceaseless struggle of the academic community to sustain the university tradition so firmly established over time as the most effective way of defending the integrity and vital interests of the university or academic community against internal corruption or subversion and unwarranted external intervention. Sustaining such a university tradition does not imply a mere slavish conformity with time-honoured custom and practice, but actually involves constant critical evaluations operating within this tradition with a view up upgrading and fine-tuning them, or even jettisoning old ones and creating new ones as the circumstances of the academic community and those of the larger society demand. It also involves the constant creation of appropriate organizational forms and the formulation of suitable strategies and tactics for conducting the struggles in defence of the idea of the university and the academic community against their internal and external foes. In summary, what can be truthfully said of our forty-plus universities (both federally and state owned) is that they all have formal legal reality which confers on them, with minor variations, the aims, objectives, roles, functions, and modes of governance in the tradition of British civic and Western universities. All of them have been concretely situated within some form of physical structures, ranging from brand-new, custom-built, high-rise edifices for some to rundown and dilapidated makeshift structures for others. Some have varying degrees of adequate physical infrastructure for teaching, research, and the accommodation and recreational activities of staff and students, with the possibility of sustaining some kind of campus life and university culture round the clock. However, for many others (especially most of the state-owned ones) their physical infrastructure is so meager that campus life ceases completely and their mini-campuses become virtual ghost villages after classes and official working hours on week days and during weekends and holidays. This differential endowment of universities in terms of their physical infrastructure constitutes a major of inequality in the development of a pan-Nigerian academic community cutting across campuses and capable and willing to defend the integrity and vital interests of the entire Nigerian university system: a since qua non for creating and sustaining a Nigerian university tradition. Hence, the strategic significance and necessity of the creation of a Nigerian academic community. Government Intervention in the Internal Governance of Universities as a Major Factor Inhibiting the Development of an Autonomous Academic Community One factor of overwhelming importance in vitiating the university government relationship is what Prof. J.F.A. AJAYI identified in 1972 as a Potential conflict between the universities and political leaders. His potential conflict arises from the formal legal rights to autonomy and academic freedom granted to the universities by the laws establishing them and the insistence of the university people, especially the ASUU activities, on these rights in the face attempts, sometimes crude, on the Part of governments and their agents to derogate from, or even totally abrogate them. In an attempt to justify government breach of its own law as by subverting the autonomy of universities, government and its supporters distort the position of the universities by interpreting their claim to autonomy to mean a dogmatic claim to complete or absolute autonomy, when in actual fact Nigerian academics have always recognized that their right to autonomy is in no way absolute but rather contingent on government responsibility for funding and for determining the goals and broad outlines of higher education policy. This position was very clearly and unambiguously stated in a recent ASUU document, thus: With regard to universities, it is our view that the fulfill being in position to government. It is not unusual for military regimes to have an ambivalent, carrot-and-stick attitude towards the universities in their attempt to bring them to heel: while they raid the universities for politically and ideologically suitable cronies, for recruitment as ministers, commissioners, directors-general, executive secretaries, chairman, executive directors of parastatals, and government-owned enterprises, they at the same time, tighten the screws of control and subjugation on the university system. It is a matter of profound ironic significance that under military rule the agents of government who have inflicted the most devastating blows on the universities have been those appointed from within the university system to serve in government as agents of the military superpower in the formulation and execution of policies affecting universities. An early example of such enemies from within was Chief A. Y. Eke, former Registrar of University of Lagos, with a long track record of service in Ife and Ibadan universities, who was Yakubu Gowon Federal Commissioner or Education in 1973 during a trade dispute on salaries and conditions of service between the union of Nigerian academics (NUT) and the Councils of Nigeria five universities, the Federal Government and the owning state governments being interested parties. Eke succeeded in maneuvering the leadership of the NUT into a ridiculous negotiating position on fringe benefits which enabled Yakubu Gowon to occupy moral high ground vis-Æ’ -vis the Nigerian academic and terrorize them with the threat of expulsion from their campus residences unless they immediately ended their strike action. In this way Gowon inflicted a deep wound on the collective self-confidence of the academic and on the legally entrenched principle of university autonomy on a matter of domestic jurisdictin for each university council and governed by contractual agreement between each university academic and his or her university council. JUBRIL Aminu and the Nigerian University system. In the whole history of university education in Nigeria, Jibril Aminu, lecturer in medicine at the university of Ibadan until 1974, occupied an unprecedented and uniquely strategic position in Nigerian education policy decision-making cirles between 1974 and 1990. From this vantage position, first an Executive and then as Federal Minister of Education, 1985-90, Jubril Aminu waged a relentless war on the universities and inflicted several devastating blows on the much cherished principle of university autonomy of individual universities and treated their VC as his subalterns who could be summoned to his office in Lagos at his pleasure and kept waiting for as long as he wished. In pursuit of his pet idea of a quota system he caused the Obasanjo government to set up JAMB, which has usurped on a discriminatory basis the traditional rights of universities to conduct their own autonomous admission exercises. Starting with the Ali-Must-Go country wide student protest against a threefold increase in the cost of hostel accommodation and feeding in April 1978, the Federal Government and Jibril Aminu NUC adopted the despatch of closure orders from Lagos (usually announced over the mass media or sent to VC by radio telephone) as an instrument of long distance crisis management in the universities, thus effectively usurping the powers of council, senate and VC for student discipline and management under the laws establishing the universities. A major fallout from the Uthman Mohammed Commission of Enquiry into the Ali-Must-Go student protests was the unlawful dismissal by the Federal Government of many students, twelve academics, and other senior staff (including two VC) from several Nigerian Universities in clear violation of the victims fundamental right to fair hearing and the lawful procedure for discipline staff and studentsentrenched in the laws, rules, and regulations obtaining in the respective universities4. However, it was a Federal Minister of Education, the almighty agent of the unrestrained imperial presidency of Babangida, that Aminu was able to inflict the most crippling, almost fatal wounds on the universities. Apart from intensifying all the modes of centralized control and manipulation which he imposed on the universities autonomy by insisting on the immediate application of Decree 16 of 1985 on Minimum Standards and Accreditation of Educational Institutions as soon as he assumed duty as minister. The ill-camouflaged aim in applying this obnoxious decree to the universities was to assail and destroy the most crucial bulwark of university autonomy: academic freedom or the right of each university to determine the content, orientation, and mode of implementation of its academic programmes. As a consequence of the application of this decree and the penalties of prison sentence and fine which it brandishes over academics for noncompliance, many universities have been cowed into adopting some carelessly formulated and inferior NUC courses and minimum standards in preference to their own due process by academic departments in the first instance, then scrutinized and amended, if need be, and approved by Faculty Board and Senate in turn. To demonstrate that he was the undisputed tsar of the Nigeran university system, Jibril Aminu did not fail to use the ultimate sanction of proscription against the apical student organization NANS as sequel to the ABU students massacre by the Nigerian Police in May, 1986 and the country wide student solidarity protest that followed it. As for ASUU, because of its alleged confrontational posture vis-Æ’ -vis government, the union was barred form membership of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) in 1987 and then proscribed in 1988 for embarking on a nationwide strike over EUSS. There was also the widespread and unscrupulous use of visitation panels by Babangida and his Minister to disrupt the normal rhythm of universities and destabilize them, without ensuring that the panel reports were published, and made available for the benefit and edification of the universities concerned. On the contrary, government published only white papers on the reports and these contained carefully selected excerpts from the reports and tendentious and prejudicial comments ascribed to the Visitor with the following main purposes in view: (a) to cover up enormous financial and other crimes committed by government cronies and agents who had been awarded the universities as fielfdoms by government, and (b) to victimize scholars whose position on major university and public issues diverged from, or conflicted with those of government and their cronies within the universities by invoking nonexistent visitorial powers to discipline staff, up to and including termination, compulsory retirement, and dismissal. This was how, through a conspiracy among Grace Alele-Williams, Vice-Chancellor, University of Benin, the Council of the university, Jibril Aminu and Babangida, the University of Benin Visitation Panel report was used unlawfully in 1987 to remove Dr. Festus Iyayi, incumbent ASUU National President, Dr. Agbonbifoh, the University of Benin treasurer fr5om their jobs as lecturers, on the spurious ground that they breached the code of conduct for public officers. The same visitation panel report was used without due cause to sack Prof. Itse Sagay, the Dean of Law and to reprimand and ban Prof. Omene, the Provost of the University of Benin College of Medicine, from holding any administrative post for life. The danger which these agents of state terrorism constitute to the cohesiveness of the university community and its innocent law abiding members, is underscored by the fact that it has takenIyayi, Agboinfoh, and Sagay (veritable victims of state terrorism), the ASUU, and the very able and committed ASUU, lawyers eight years from 1987 to 1995 togo from a Benin High Court through the Federal Court of Appeal to the Supreme court to establish their case of wrongful dismissal and bad faith against the university and state authorities and get reinstated to their academic positions in Uniben. A.B. Fafunwa as an Education Tsar When Prof. A.B> Fafunwa replaced Jibril Aminu as Minister of Education early in 1990, many people in the Nigerian university system breathed a sligh of relief, believing that Fafunwa, who, unlike Aminu, had spent most of his adult working life in the university system where he served his apprenticeship properly and occupied several responsible academic and administrative positions before his retirement, would bring to bear on the office of minister all the maturity, wisdom, and conciliatory skills which substantial relevant experience should confer on a university person. However, Fafunwa faced his most serious test (and failed woefully) as a friend of the Nigerian university system and its autonomy when in October 1990 he wrote as Minister of Education on the instruction of his President and Commander-in-Chief to Professor Omotoye Olorode and Obaro Ikime and Dr. Idowu Awopetu requesting them to retire compulsorily from their position as lecuters in the University of Ibadan and Obafemi Awolowo University in the public interest. Carrying out such a ridiculous and lawless brief would be understandable in a mindless military dictatorship, but Fafunwa responses to pressmen questions concerning the propriety of the sacks were amazing to say the least. Fafunwa was relying exclusively on the arrogance of power common among dictators and their cronies when he responded to pressumen queries about the conflict between his order to our colleagues to retire compulsorily and the laws governing those universities to which the lecturers belonged, thus: The universities were government property and had no right of their own to challenge an order from the government.(Daily Times, 25 Oct. 1990). Again when questioned on the precise nature of the pubvlic interest for which the lecturers were retired, he simply nproduced this piece of illogic: the government did not inform the public before employing them and would bot by the same reason tell the public why they were retired (ibid). Once more, this lawless and dangerous posturing by Babangida autocratic regime was challenged in a Lagos high court by Femi Falana, attorney-at-law and ASUU lawyer, on the court restraining the President, his minister, and their agents and assigns from interfering with the exercise of their rights and obligations as lecturers at Ife. Another form of government interference in the domestic jurisdiction of our universities and subversion of their autonomy is the usurpation by government of the power to appoint Vice-Chancellors from university councils, starting with Gowon in respect of Ibadan and Lagos in 1972, then Oluwole Rotimi in respect of Ife in 1974, and Murtala Mohammed in respect of Ife, ABU, and Nsukka in 1975. The message which this usurpation of the power to appoint VC was meant to convey and which it did convey was that no academic could becomeVC of a Nigerian University and keep his job unless he found favour with the military oligarchy and continued to cultivate that favour. Consequently, VC under military rule, with a few honourable exceptions, have tended not to perceive themselves, and are not perceived by their colleagues, as legitimate leaders and defenders of their universities against unwarranted encroachments from government, but rather as government resident commissioners and chief security officers. Their perceived responsibility is to maintain passivity and acquiescence in the status quo among their colleagues and students in the interest of the political authority responsible for appointing them. Ramified interference in the internal self-management of universities is also actively promoted through the constitution of the governing councils of universities by appointing to them a preponderance of government representatives who lack the knowledge of, or empathy with what the university is about. By virtue of such deficiency many government appointees on Council are willing tools in the hands of government and its agents in ramming through university councils policies, directives and administrative fiats which tend to subvert the integrity of the universities and render them incapable of effectively pursuing their legitimate objectives and performing their vital tasks. Finally, there is yet an even more insidious and, therefore, more dangerous sense in which the cumulative impact of autocratic and authoritarian military rule helps to subvert the intergrity of our universities and makes the task of creating an academic community even more difficult. This has to do with the constant transmission of negative values and attitudes from the lawless culture of military oligarchs and their cronies into the university communities by agents of government operating in the universities and university people operating in government. One such negative value is manifested in the pervasive antidemocratic and authoritar8ian style of administration at all levels of the university governance from the VC at the top through deans of faculties to heads of departments. These various tiers of authoritarian governance complements one another and together help to complement the state autocratic system and facilitate the persecution of genuinely democratic and upright elements within the university system. In this task of subverting internal democratic governance the state and its agents within the university system have a vast array of resources at their disposal. These include the recruitment and use of unprincipled and weak-willed university people to spy on and bear false testimony against their colleagues in return for all sorts of financial and other rewards. There is also the widespread use of unlawful arrests and detention without trial against radical and pro-democracy elements among staff and students. By deploying the tactics of carrot and stick the agents of military autocracy in the university system help to inculcate the habits of corruption and kleptocracy in some university people while reducing others to a state of paralytic inaction through the fear of state terrorism and harassment induced in them. Organisational Prerequisites for the Creation of a Pan-Nigerian Academic Community Given the profound nature of the crisis of democracy which decades of autocratic and corrupt rule of military oligarchs and their civilian cronies have imposed on our people and society, and given the fact also that the crisis of governance within the university system is an integral part of the national crisis of democracy it become necessary for Nigerian University people to recognize the primacy of organization ion the struggle for the attainment of a truly Nigerian academic community. Such an organization must not only be strong enough to wage successfully the struggle for the defense of university autonomy and intellectual freedom, it must also be able to make a decisive contribution to the struggle of the large society for democracy and human rights. As I indicated in the early part of this presentation ASUU is the only body within the Nigerian university system today which has a semblance of, or perhaps approximates to an organizational force with the potential, but by no means actual, capability to discharge the domestic university and external societal responsibilities stated above. As much as we are bound to appreciate the monumental contribution that ASUU has made, especially in the last seventeen years or so, to our collective forward movement, it would be less than honest not to recognize major organizational weaknesses which are in urgent need of remedy. A fundamental truth about ASUU as an organization, the only organization, that Nigerian academics have to struggle with, is that it is a minority organization. It is an organization that is actively supported and run, both at the national and branch levels, by a minority, albeit a slowly increasing minority, of its members who are staunchly and negatively affected by the zealotry of the even smaller minority of careerist/pro-government subverting the work of the union and its activists. The work of the union is also affected by the apathy of a large majority of its members. This majority ordinarily do not participate actively in the work of ASUU and are virtually impossible to mobilize for union activities except in crisis situations when conditions of service (like review of salaries and fringe benefits) are involved. Further more, the overwhelming majority of senior academics, in the category of professors, readers, and senior lecturers, tend to distance themselves from ASUU, even though they pay their membership dues, because they recognize opportunistically that activism in ASUU is not conducive to preferment for sponsorship for lucrative appointments and assignments within both the university setting and government bureaucracy. The ramified use of university people, especially professors, in such a blatantly cynical and corrupting manner by the Babangida dictatorship provoked a tongue-in-cheek feature article in one national newsmagazine, captioned All the president Profs! Such misuse of university people is a good measure of the actual and potential loss of the contributions of which most Nigerian senior academics are objectively capable of making to the organizational work and strength of ASUU. It is also obvious that female academics are represented among ASUU activists by fewer people than their proportion of the total membership of the union can justify. This disparity between the actual and potential activism of female academics is probably due to the entrenched male chauvinism of the Nigerian society and the equally entrenched diffidence of Nigerian women in competing with men for public office or limelight. In view of the phenomenal growth in the education of Nigerian women at all levels in recent times, it is to be expected that the proportion of female to male academics will improve dramatically in favour of women in the short to medium term. Consequently, unless ASUU takes decisive steps to mobilize more and more women for active participation and leadership in its work, it will be shooting itself in the foot organizationally. Lessons of History from Traditions of Popular Struggle It is being suggested here that the current ASUU struggle, to be maximally effective, should learn from the lessons of struggles by the Nigerian people against all sorts of forces, internal and external, constraining their sovereign and democratic rights over the last 500 years of more. Without learning these lessons and grasping some of the major factors responsible for the many failures suffered in these struggles, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to formulate appropriate and adequate strategies and tactics for conducting our struggle for freedom and democratic governance both within the university system and in the larger society. The most pervasive of these factors militating in historical time depth against our people successful struggle has been the time failure, sometimes total absence, of organization to confront and override the superior organizational capacity and resources of their opponents. This is true whether one thinks of the organizational capacity of the Sokoto jihadists against the Hausa kingdoms; the British colonial adventures against the various Nigerian communities they subjugated in the 19th and 20th centuries; the colonial state in Nigeria versus its petty bourgeois opponents the post-independence ruling elite vis-Æ’ -vis the Nigerian people, the military juntas and their cronies against the Nigerian people. Every oppressive ruling authority in Nigeria has resorted to draconian authoritarian laws and all sorts of doubious stratagems to states, and regions to ensure that the people lack the organizational capacity, founded on their unity of purpose, to defend their sovereignty and freedom. Consequently, the most important strategic prerequisite for the successful conduct of democratic struggles is the creation of a superior organizational capacity to that of the opponents of democracy. To achieve this, we must first learn to shun the divisive and secretarian posturing of the political elite which, at every stage in our people stuggle for national sovereignty and democracy, has helped to frustrate our collective efforts and enthrone autocracy, injustice, poverty, and backwardness. Secondly, we must learn from the limited and episodic triumphs of the progressive forces in the course of this series of aborted national struggles. I wish to focus on two examples of such triumphs which derive from traditions of popular struggles in this century. The first tradition is that of fearless, militant trade unionism spearheaded by Nigeria own labour leader number one, Papa Michael Imoudu, in the late 1930s and 1940s. This tradition of militancy, independence, and fearlessness continued to exert significant influence for good on Nigerian governance until the Babangida era when the labour movement was effectively crippled by a combination of brutal repression against labour militants, and bribery of corrupt, greedy, and traitorous labour leaders by an equally corrupt and treacherous government. The Imodu tradition of trade union militancy was so successful, out of all proportion to the numerical strength of labour, because it paid serious attention to the creation of a pan-Nigerian organization of labour, whose unity was based on a collective commitment to the defence of the vital interests of the working people. As a result, Imodu and his fellow unionists were able to struggle single-mindedly and successfully in the 1940s and 1950s against low and racially discriminatory colonial wages and salaries and poor conditions of work for Nigerians. This Imoudu tradition persisted into the Hassan Sumonu and Ali Chiroma-led Nigeria Labour Congress from the late 1970s to 1987 when militant trade unionism suceeded in stopping the attempts by the Shagari and Buhari governments to throw open the Nigerian economy to plunder and squandering in obedience to the World Bank and IMF insistence on the need for privatization of public enterprises, liberalization of trade, and massive devaluation of the national currency. The second tradition of popular struggle worthy of deep study and emulating is that of the equally fearless, militant, and autonomo9us student union movement in Nigeria which dates back to the 1940s, but came to its own from 1957 when the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) was established as the apical and umbrella organization for Nigerian students. Since then the NUNS, or its alter ego, NANS, has become a major bulwark for the defence, not just of students rights and liberties, but also of the nation sovereignty and the people democratic rights. Relying mainly on mass protest and civil disobedience, the NUNS has taken on several Nigerian governments on their policies perceived as derogating from the sovereignty of the nation and the democratic and human rights of its people. Starting with its successful protest in 1960-61 against the traitorous Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact which the Balewa Government was made to abrogate in January 1962, the NUNS or NANS became an organization force with which successive Nigerian governments have had to reckon, and have unsuccessfully tried to bend to their will by brute force, or chicanery, or both. On the contrary the NUNS has succeeded at all times in keeping its organization functioning autonomously (vis-Æ’ -vis government and its agents on the campuses) and relatively effectively in spite of several banning orders and other attempts by government and its agents to subvert it. The NUNS tradition of independent, militant, and patriotic unionism became so well established that Babangida with all his repertoire of fraudulent and coercive devices failed either to settle struggle against autocracy, justice, and misrule. ASUU and the Tradition of Militant and Independent Unionism It was not until the devastation of ASUU by the repressive measures taken by Obasanjo military dictatorship in 1978 as a sequel to the Uthman Mohammed Commission report on the Ali Must- Go students protest, that ASUU learnt to take on board the traditional of autonomous, militant unionism and abandon the earlier NAUT tradition of a largely, if not exclusively bread and butter unionism. This new tradition which started with Biodun Jeyifo leadership of ASUU in 1980 and 1981, derived insights from both the Imodu and NANS traditions and was able to initiate and sustain a struggle for improved funding of the universities, better conditions of service for university workers, and the refurbishing of dilapidated infrastructures. The high point of the struggle was the ASUU strike of 1980-81 which was the longest and most effective up to that time in the history of university education in Nigeria, but it yielded, in concrete terms, little more than an improved salary structure, the USS, for university people and the reinstatement of our colleagues who were sacked by Obasanjo in1978. The mode of struggle within this tradition of militant unionism matured considerably and became shaper under the leadership of the late Mahmud Modibbo Tukur, 1982-86. Tukur tenure was distinguished by the closer integration of ASSU struggles with those of the largest society, as evidenced in ASUU merger with the NLC In 1983 and, through its membership of NLC, its high profile engagement in all debates on major national issues. This development reached its apogee under the Festus Iyayi presidency (1986-87) and Attahiru Jega presidency (1987-93) when the Babangida dictatorship in an attempt to smash the union manoeured itself into a situation of confrontation with ASUU and used all manner of repressive measures against the union. These measures included detention of its leaders without change or trial 1986, 1988 and 1990 for example, unlawful sacking of Iyayi, Agbonifoh, and Sagay form Uniben in 1987, decoupling of ASUU fro NLC in 1987, proscription of ASUU in 1988 and again 1992 during difficult negotiations between government and the union on the dilapidated state of the universities and working conditions of academics. As an integral part of this tradition of struggle, ASUU developed a two-pronged methodology of linking its struggle with those of the larger society for democracy and human rights and depending its own democratic practice as an organization. The union implemented the first prong of this methodology through its work within the NLC, popular mobilization campaigns on a wide range of public issues, active participation in human rights, and prodemocracy organization and their campaigns. It depend a partly to mobilize and partly to seek the opinion of its rank and file members for the determination of all the major issues confronting the Union and the larger society. Concluding Remarks There is no doubt that the successful, though difficult, negotiation of ASUU agreement with the Federal Government on Funding of Universities, university autonomy and acadeimic freedom, and conditions of service of academic staff, which was concluded on 3rd September, 1992 but was not implemented for antother year after that, was a major feat of achievement for ASUU and a testimony to its growing maturity, strength, and confidence as an organization. However, government studied indifference to ASUU request for its review as provided for in Chapter 7,8 of the agreement clearly indicates that, for ASUU and the fledgling pan-Nigerian academic community that it is nurturing, it is NOT YET UHURU! Confronted with a taciturn and vicious military dictatorship, a carefully considered one with due and proper regard being paid to matters of strategy and tactics. Whatever position the NDC of ASUU is going to adopt on this stalemate, artificially contrived by government, the union should jealously guiard theingrity and unity of its organization, the traditional relation of solidarity and mutual supoort o major issues ofr public concern with the Nigerian students movement, and the rich fund of public supoort and empathy which the union copiously drew from in tis last showdown with the Federal Government in1992-93. More importantly, since ASUU struggle indefence of the interests of its members and the entire Nigerian academic community of our dreams extends into the indefinite future, being coterminous with the life expectancy of university education in Nigeria, ASUU must be concerned also with how it will enter the twenty-first century, less than five years ahead, as such a supremacy fit, robust, and united organization that any government will dare to ignore or trifle with it only at its own peril. I wish your conference a most fruitful and stimulating deliberation. Thank you. Notes 1. Ajayi, J.F.A. Towards and African Academic Community, in T.M. Yesufu, (ed) Creating the African University: Emerging Issues of the 1970 (Ibadan, OUP, 1973). P.14 2. See Ike, V.C. University Development in Africa: The Nigerian Experience (Ibadan, OUP, 1976) pp167-175 where in a discussion under the subheading, University Autonomy he refers to this principle at least eight times as either complete or absolute autonomy. 3. See ASUU, Path to Purposeful and Sustained Development of Nigerian Universities (Ibadan, typescript, Feb. 1991) 4. Idris Abdulkadir, a Professor of Animal Husbandry in ABU, Zaria, who succeeded Malam Yhaya Aliyu in 1986 as NUC Executive Secretary, has since then been discharging the duties of his office in the tsarist and anti-university tradition of Jubril Aminu. 5. See Osoba, S.O. Fafunwa and the Siege on Nigerian Universities in The Punch, 23 November 1990. 6. Ben Nwabueze, former lecturer in law at the University of Lagos, and retired Professor of Law from University of Zambuia, Lusaka and Company Secretary at Union Bank of Nigeria, PLC., who succeeded Aliyu Fafunwa in1993 as Education Secretary, added his own quota to official government subversion of the universities by unilaterally setting aside the agreement reached between BABangida government after more than a year of veryb difficult and traumatic negotiation by invoking the spurious legal principle of imperfect obligation. He also generally treated ASUU leaders and even the eminent jurist, Justice Kayode Esho, who was appointed by government to mediate between ASUU and government, with utter disrespect and scant attention. 7. See African Guardian, 30th August, 1993. |
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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 07:58
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