The Rotary Club of Ikeja-Alausa Central has donated a water borehole to the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu Primary Health Centre, as part of efforts to enhance public access to clean water.
The District Governor, Rotary Club 9110, Mr Remi Bello, said this on Friday during the inauguration of the borehole project at the centre in Oritse, Ikeja.
He said, “The statistics from last year’s World Toilet Day regarding water sanitation and hygiene says 95 per cent of our health centres in the country lack water and good toilet facilities. The Rotary Club in Ikeja saw this need and decided to sink a borehole in this centre for the community.
“This is a good example of a service programme to change lives, and we must do more collaboration and partnership to achieve these goals. We have to do more, and other projects are still on the way.”
The Charter President, Rotary Club of Ikeja-Alausa Central, Mr Deji Shonuga, said the club embarked on the project after assessing the environment and observing a lack of safe water.
“We carried out an assessment of the environment and found out there are certain basic amenities, such as safe water, lacking in the community health centre which relied on collecting rainwater. As part of our mission in the Rotary Club, we always look for a way to make positive impact in our communities, and in line with the Sustainable Development Goals which includes access to clean water, we find this feat noteworthy,” he added.
Saturday, November 27, 2021
The fuel subsidy
tiff
By Muyiwa Akintunde
Three hundred and forty Naira – yes, N340 –
for a litre of Premium Motor
Spirits (PMS) by the year 2022!
Unlike other
milestones such as the esoteric Vision 20:2020 by which Nigeria was to have
been catapulted into the league of the first 20 economies in the world at the
finishing line of the last century, the N340-per-litre of what we generally
call “fuel” or “petrol” is not a joke.
Right-pricing
fuel (the euphemism for subsidy removal on petrol) has been on the card as
far back as the Second Republic (1979 – 83). The government of President Shehu
Shagari jacked up the PMS pump price from 15.3 kobo to 20 kobo in 1982. That
was when 55 kobo would buy one US dollar! Shagari didn’t make it a headline,
but his administration bore subsidy on petrol.
The term “subsidy” in relation of fuel became
an official Nigerian lexicon four years later when military President Ibrahim
Babangida introduced the widely unpopular Structural Adjustment Programme,
influenced by the International Monetary Fund. So, the pump price moved from 20
kobo to 39 kobo per litre.
Fuel subsidy removal has since developed into
the banana peel of many administrations since then. For instance, those who
wanted President Goodluck Jonathan out of power massed against his commitment
to kick subsidy in the petroleum sector out of our life. On the first day of
2012, Jonathan gave Nigerians an unusual New Year gift in the form of the cancellation
of fuel subsidy. Civil society and opposition politicians rallied protesters in
major cities against the policy. “Occupy Nigeria”, as the movement was known,
was a major factor in making the statesman from Otuoke un-electable and unable
to repeat the class as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He lost and
uncharacteristically conceded the 2015 poll. But from N87 per litre where
Jonathan left it, the pump price has skyrocketed to N165 today.
From the point
that Nigeria’s oil corporation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was
dressed in a corporate garb two months ago following the enactment of the
Petroleum Industry Act, it was obvious that the subsidy regime and allied
issues would no longer be treated as “business as usual”. Tuesday’s
announcement by the Group Managing Director of the new NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari
was therefore anticipated. For quite a number of people, the shock was not the
increase but that the pump price of fuel would hit the root by as much as 110
per cent early next year!
In a country
where the akara seller next door
blames her price increase on the existing pump price of fuel even when none of
the components of her business justified her claim, tougher times indeed lie
ahead. Nigerians are no doubt resilient – aren’t we the happiest people on the
face of the earth? – but this is one big hit that may be too hard to bear.
How well have
we recovered from the economic setback propelled by the Covid-19 pandemic to be
able to navigate the unpleasant economic time the spiralling inflation expected
post-subsidy removal will usher in? This is one of the major reasons that
organised labour is leading the campaign against the proposed hike.
Government says
it will provide a soft landing for the vulnerable through financial support.
Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister Zainab Ahmed has been on the
rooftop lately, shouting about the N5,000 support for 40 million poor Nigerians.
We have never
been faithful with figures. Our last attempt at counting ourselves was 20 years
ago! As a result, we have been basing our projections on guesstimation (guess work and estimation). How do we then get the precise
data on who gets what? How do we eliminate potential fraud in the system, in which
previous policies were enmeshed in? How will the palliative not end up in the
wrong hands as experienced in similar initiatives?
Throwing cash
into this challenge is not smart. An oil-producing country that depends on
other countries to refine its raw product and import it in finished form back
to it has prepared itself to sink into the deep shit we now find ourselves. For
decades that Nigeria embarked on turn-around maintenance of our refineries, the
only things that turned around were the pockets of those in charge with their
pockets bulging at the seams. One of the hopes in the horizon is the 650,000
barrels a day by Dangote Refinery. But that massive relief remained only what
it is: hope.
Yes, Nigeria is
bleeding from the subsidy on fuel, but have we done enough to check leakages in
the system through which the country pays for product not supplied? Have we killed the corruption within the
supply chain? Of course, if we don’t kill corruption, the cankerworm will hit
back at us ferociously, and kill us. That is the dilemma of the Nigerian
situation.
Caveat
The Discussion,
a weekly column, seeks to promote healthy discussion on germane public issues. Readers
are encounraged to share their perspectives on the issue of the week.
This writer is
not all-knowing. Please feel free to disagree with views expressed here.
In doing so,
however, make your comments free of bile: no abuse, no disrespect to others’
comments. And, please be factual.
Hezekiah Adesanya Akintunde
(Apesin of Owu Abeokuta) 1917 – January 15, 1975
I owe you an apology, Ba’a mi. I had promised my children – your
grandchildren – and my wife that on this day that marks the 40th
year you had your last breath I shall commence a Foundation in your name to
promote that which you held so dearly: education. For as long as I have my
breath and God being on the throne, I shall keep that pledge sooner than later.
I had regaled my family and quite a lot of people about what uniquely
kind hearted man I had the privilege of having as a father. Within your little
resources, you spared no cost in educating not only your children but also
demonstrated care for anyone who required your assistance in fulfilling their
educational dreams. Even when the stories neighbours told you about why their
children were out of school didn’t look convincing, you would always provide
support.
In the ‘face-me-I-face-you’ house that we lived at Ijaiye Street,
Odi-Olowo Mushin, Lagos, quarrels over inanities were permanent fixtures. And
you would carefully avoid the scenes as you returned from work or social
outing, navigating your way into our single room. Then you would have us locked
all inside, after ensuring that your wife, Apinke Taiwo was out of harm’s way
at her petty trading kiosk right in front of our residence. You often explained
your reason for staying clear from violence. “You just might be unlucky to step
out at the moment one of the combatants threw a dangerous weapon and it landed on
your forehead!” Only on very rare circumstances did you have to caution quarrelling
parties, and you must have held such individuals in high esteem.
You wanted the best of education for your children. And because you had
no ethnic or regional boundaries, you desired such opportunities anywhere they
were located in the country. When it was time for my older brother, Oluyemisi
Adigun to go to secondary schools, your choices were far and further afield. At
that time, Federal Government Colleges offered first class education at
affordable costs. In spite of your wife’s protests, you chose Sokoto and Warri
for your son and he passed the admission examinations into both schools. Your
first choice was Federal Government College, Sokoto and there you prepared my
brother to go. But my mother cried to all members of the family who could
influence your decision.
Her case was understandable. Her first child, who was about two years
old, was butchered in mysterious circumstances at Epe where both of you resided
as young couple. My mother had to wait for 12 years to have Oluyemisi, and
three years and three months later, she gave birth to me. All attempts to have
more children ended in futility. And here you were, about to send one of her
two surviving children into the farthest end of the world!
You finally gave in. Off to Federal Government College, Warri my brother
went in January 1970, at a time only the daring travelled eastwards; the
Nigerian civil war having just ended. Back home on his first holiday, my
brother told vivid stories of corpses of soldiers and civilians found in the
thick bush of their school compound. But that would not dissuade you from
sending him back when the holiday was over.
When it was my turn three years later, you had learnt from the
experience of my brother’s and mellowed. But you still didn’t want me to have
my secondary education in Lagos. You had your sight in two of the famous
schools in the old Western region – Comprehensive High School, Aiyetoro and
Egbado College, Igbogila. Like my older brother, I secured admission into both
schools. But this time, my mother had her way. Not only would she not allow her
last child leave her sight, but she also needed me to provide her with
assistance in her trade and also at home. I almost missed the admission process
into Lagos City College, Yaba as my father applied very late.
Ba’a mi, you could not resist the lure of polygamy, which is common in
your lineage. That made you to leave apart from your first wife – my mother – even
when she never made troubles with you about her rivals. Being very devoted to
your extended family and ancestral home, it was a matter of time that you would
become a traditional chief. And when it did happen in the early 1970s, you had
a special celebration for me; for you had be conferred with the title of Apesin,
one of the several names given to me at birth.
For those who know the ways of the world, that marked the beginning of
the end of your eventful life. It was said that your drink was poisoned at a
social event in our ancestral home. Fingers pointed to an agent of the
ex-husband of one of the women you married. A strange ailment set in thereafter.
You were moved to all manner of healing homes and eventually ended up the
Sacred Heart Hospital, Lantoro, Abeokuta.
I made several requests to see you on your sick bed at Lantoro. But I
was always told that you would soon be back home. In the evening of January 15,
1975, one of my cousins walked me out of the house at Ilupeju and broke the
news of your death to me.
Having lost Oluremilekun, the first daughter of one of your wives, in
her infancy, you had Oluyemisi (aged 17), Olumuyiwa (14), Adekoyejo (aged 1)
and Olubunmi (also aged 1), their three mothers as well as a contingent of
relations, the church, the community, friends and associates to witness your
interment at the Owu Baptist Church cemetery.
My mother held on to keep her children going. But when she could no
longer cope, she had to give in to the request of your youngest brother,
Olaosebikan Aikulola (who also has since joined you) to have my brother and I
live with him at Oduwobi Street, Ilupeju. Daddy (Pa Aikulola) had a large
heart. His home was home to all even when he relocated to our village, Abese.
While Olubunmi (now Mrs Akinwale) lived with her mother, Adekoyejo
became an orphan less than two years after your departure. He was taken in by
your oldest sister, the matriarch of the Akintunde family, Mama Obiyomi. Thereafter, her own
daughter, Sister Ibitola (now of blessed memory) took Adekoyejo in before he
ended up in Abese to live with your brother, Pa Aikulola.
While you were on your sick bed, your first son, Oluyemisi, finished in
top grade at Federal Government College, Warri. His classmates who made lesser
grades immediately progressed to the universities. You had always trained us
not to be a burden to anyone. Even as Daddy (Pa Aikulola) was willing to help,
he had a large house to cater for. My brother, at only 18, shouldered the responsibilities
of my mother and myself. Our mother had left Mushin to his younger cousin’s
residence at Adeyemi Street, Oshodi, while my brother got a one room apartment
at Association Avenue, Ilupeju where we both lived. I completed my studies at
Lagos City College, Yaba in 1978. It was only when I also started working after
my secondary school education that my brother could continue his education;
this time at what was then Lagos State College of Science and Technology,
Isolo, Lagos. He graduated with Upper Credit in HND Accountancy and Finance,
although he was one of the celebrated campus journalists.
Ba’a mi, if there is repentance in the grave you would have reconciled
with my doting and devoted mother, Apinke Taiwo who crossed over to your side
on May 1, 1983. My brother and I were too young to take care of her. She
probably would have stayed here longer. You know that your son, Oluyemisi, also
joined you on May 10, 2001 in circumstances that would require another long tale.
All I can say for now is that Oluyemisi’s transition – resulting from a
protracted terminal ailment – virtually shattered me, his wife, Caroline Baby
Akintunde, having died in her ancestral village near Warri 10 days earlier.
I am convinced that your spirit of free giving had made the way for your
offspring at seemingly impossible occasions. You and your first wife – my dear
mother – must have had a hand in choosing for me a partner who had made
self-denials and sacrifices to keep your lineage strong. Vera Akintunde never
met both of you, but your aura oozes out of her. She had nagged me ceaselessly
to fulfil the dream of having an enduring legacy in your name because you truly
deserve to be eternally celebrated. Now that your grandchildren are beginning
to find their own life, that commitment returns to its right place – the front
burner of my thought.
For your compassion to family – nuclear and extended – and all who had
the privilege to encounter you, you left an indelible legacy for which you will
forever be my hero and always remain in my memory.
Having now watched the interview with the Lagos State Commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corp (NSCDC), Obafaiye Shem, I sympathise with the fellow. By my assessment, the man we have now chosen to denigrate as "My Oga at the top!" acquitted himself before the panel of three probing interviewers who hardly gave him a breathing space. You may check: http://www.channelstv.com/home/2013/03/06/employment-scam-cant-happen-in-civil-defence-lagos-commandant/
The thrust of the Channels TV’s Sunrise interview was on "Job Racketeering in MDAs" with NSCDC as focus. Shem spoke about the several arrests made across the country and did say he was posted from Katsina State to Lagos State three months ago, yet the interviewers wanted him to answer questions on arrest of scammers in Abuja!
On that, he said of NSCDC: “We have possibly the fattest (whatever that means) and the fastest intelligence system in the country because we are everywhere, even in the most remote part of the country.” He was then asked: “How were you able to get the people you arrested…?” He answered smartly: “The machinery of arrest is not something we discuss openly here.” They probed further.
“We are not asking for the methodology. You can talk about how you got your information briefly. You don’t have to give details of it.” He kept to his turf: “Well information gather is information gathering. And that’s intelligence gathering."
He acknowledged the existence of job scammers which he said had led to the arrest of about 560 but stood his ground that NSCDC staff weren’t in any way involved.
“How do you know staff of NSCDC are not involved in the scam?”
He replied: “Because of the confidence I have in the leadership of the organisation.”
He emphasised that it was because NSCDC was watching and monitoring the situation that arrests had been made.
The interviews got more interesting...
Sunrise: How do people know that they are logging on to the authentic site of the NSCDC? Have you taken steps to ensure that they are not going to a fake site in the attempt to log on to the real site of NSCDC?
Shem: What I need to tell you is that the top management of the organisation, they are more than enough, they are up to the task. In fact they have constituted…
(Interrupted) But you don’t know about those measures?
They have constituted a committee that reviews what you are just saying. They sit virtually on weekly basis to see how to improve, what has happened so far. They do weekly review of what is happening within the organisation’s internet system.
If the NSCDC were to conduct a recruitment exercise, what would be the process?
The process is normal process....
What is the normal process?
I very much believe just as all of us are aware, if there should be any recruitment process, I believe all the dailies would carry it for everybody to know. It is not everybody that really has access to this internet.
Is that the normal process?
That’s the normal process. Dailies would carry and tell you the website to go into on the internet...
What have you done to ensure that all of these means, the websites that exist on the internet are taken off so that people are not misled?
I am the Commandant of Lagos State. The question you are asking can better be answered by my Ogas at Abuja...
You mean you don’t know about that?
No! The mechanism of tracking down these things, I have told you that we have a committee at the top...
(Interrupted) That’s not enough? Because you’re talking about people who are being defrauded here... Now you cannot say what the NSCDC is doing... If you type ‘NSCDC recruitment 2013’ you’ll see all kinds of fake websites coming up...
If we are not doing anything, I wouldn’t have been able – or my team – wouldn’t have been able to make arrests...
So what are you going to do to take off those misleading websites?
The wrong websites that do not belong to NSCDC definitely will be automatically closed. And just as I have already informed you, we make publicly known in the dailies the correct website when it is time...
What is your website?
Ehn?
What is the website of NSCDC?
The website of NSCDC will be made known... I cannot categorically tell you one now because the one that we are going to...
(Interrupted) You have multiple websites...
Wait! Wait!! The one we are going to make use of I am not the one that is going to create it...
(Interrupted) The question is, what is your website?
Wait! The one that we are going to make use of is going to be made known by my Oga at the top. Yes. I can’t announce one now and my Oga says another one.
The NSCDC has multiple websites?
We are not having multiple websites. But the one that my Oga...
Not the one for employment. What is your website now? The one you use normally, the official website
If you want to know about NSCDC?
Exactly
www.nscdc
Yes?
Yes. So. (coughs) That’s all
www.nscdc That’s it?
Yes.
That’s amazing
My conclusion is that Shem is not internet savvy and the interviewers took advantage of his ignorance and vulnerability. I may be wrong, but his reference to his “Oga” at the top is the overall boss of the NSCDC who, in the public service set-up, is the only authorised person to release recruitment processes, which would include the website and links for that purpose. Something tells me that the scammers would be so happy now that attention has been deflected to the institution while they have a free rein.
I see that his responses to the rattling questions have been taken out of context and it reminds me of how Justice George Sodeinde Sowemimo went to his grave a sad man. It was his responsibility as a Judge of the High Court of Lagos to handle the treasonable felony case against Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his political associates in the early 1960s. After a long-drawn court process, Sowemimo found Awolowo and his fellow accused gulity. But Awolowo’s supporters concluded that Sowemimo acted under influence from the government of Northern Peoples Congress, which his Action Group was in opposition to. In his judgment, Sowemimo did say, in reference to Awolowo: “... Whatever others may say, this is my personal view. I am not speaking as a judge but as a Nigerian. Here we have one of the first Premiers of the autonomous region standing trial. If you were the only one before me, I would have felt that it was enough for you to have undergone the strain of the trial. I would have asked you to go. But I am sorry, I cannot do so now because my hands are tied. Having sentenced those young chaps whatever happens I have to pass some sort of sentence. If I made up my mind to sentence the other accused persons who I find were tools in the hands of others, and if my conclusion is right, it is for me to see that a punishment by me in my court is such that others would see that there is no preferential treatment.”
That whole statement by Sowemimo was reduced to just one line by Awolowo supporters – my hands are tied! And they added flesh to the skeleton – his hands tied by the NPC government and the rebel forces in the AG, led by Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola who wanted Awolowo out of the way. Sowemimo remained on the wrong side of history among his own people up to his death.
My sympathises go to Obafaiye Shem.
Professor Attahiru Jega, the INEC Chairman-in-waiting, was voted by the editorial board of Newswatch, a Nigerian weekly news magazine, as Man-of-the-Year, 1992. He had just led the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to fight and win a battle against the military government. His appointment has been widely acclaimed. Below are my recollections of Attahiru Jega. Both Profile and Interview were published in Newswatch magazine, January 11, 1993. Vol. 17, No 2. The interview runs in this weekend edition of Lagos-based Evening Standard. Also available on: www.facebook.com/akintundemuyiwa
PROFILE
I am Not a Radical
By Muyiwa Akintunde
Attahiru Jega, ASUU president, earns his laurels for his principled stand in the university crisis
A few weeks ago, Newswatch asked Abubakar Abdulkadir Jega, a judge of the federal high court, to do a character sketch of Attahiru Muhammdu Jega, his maternal first cousin and national president of the banned Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU. Says the judge tersely: “He is very determined and resolute in the pursuit of whatever he believes in. Once he sets out on such a goal, he never looks back.”
Jega, the judge, should know Jega, the university teacher, very well. They grew up together and shared the same bed as kids. Last year, Jega, the academic, confirmed the assessment of Jega, the judge. He led his rag-tag army of lecturers against the military government to advance his crusade of lifting the Nigerian university system from the valley of decadence to the mountain of excellence. Like the biblical David, he did not allow his underdog position to shake his resolve. In the end, he brought the Goliath of a government wobbling on its knees, ready to answer the lecturers’ prayers. In recent years, no Nigerian government has been so worsted, one of the reasons he won the Newswatch Man of the Year award for 1992 in the first ballot.
For Jega, the battle against government’s neglect of the university system started almost as soon as he signed on as graduate assistant with the then Bayero University College (now Bayero University), Kano in 1979. He witnessed the decay of physical facilities, the over-crowding of hostels and classrooms, the dearth of books and the flight of bright academics to other sectors where the pay is plum. Then America opened his eyes, as it were, “to what universities ought to be.” When he returned in 1985 from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States, where he earned a Ph.D in political science, he met the Nigerian universities in a more deplorable state than he left them. He decided to play a key role in stemming the rot.
The opportunity did not take too long in coming. In 1987, Jega, who was barely 30 years old, was elected ASUU president. His first major assignment was to fight for a new wage structure for university workers. In January 1988, the federal government introduced the elongated salary structure, ESS, as part of the civil service reform. It erased the 20 percent salary edge which university staff had over their counterparts in the civil service. ASUU, together with two other university unions – the Senior Staff Association, SSA, and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities, NASU – demanded for the restoration of the 20 percent differential. Idris Abdulkadir, the executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, NUC, replied that that would only be possible if the protesting workers were ready to lose pension and gratuity. ASUU, insisting on enjoying the best of the two worlds, gave the federal government a deadline of June 30 to meet the demand or have an industrial crisis on its hand. No side yielded ground. After seven months of muscle-flexing, the lecturers went on strike July 5.
Government acted swiftly. The day after, Jibril Aminu, a professor of cardiology and the then minister of education, appeared on network television to warn the lecturers that government would sack those who failed to return to work in 48 hours. The lecturers did not take Aminu seriously. But the government did. On July 8, the hammer fell on ASUU. It was banned. Jega spent a few days at the Ikoyi prisons, while other top officials of the union were harassed and prevented from travelling out of the country. Like soldiers humiliated at war, the lecturers retreated hastily to the classroom.
But the struggle continued for Jega. In 1990, he was given a second chance to lead the union after the ban was lifted August 28. His subsequent action was a testimony that he had learnt a few lessons from the 1988 clobbering. His new resolve could be summed up this way: Never again will ASUU make a selfish demand. In its June 15, 1991 letter with which it sought audience with Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa, a professor of education and minister of education, on the crisis in university education, ASUU did not limit its demand to salary increase and special allowances. It asked for increase in funds allocation to the universities and a return of autonomy of the universities eroded by the NUC and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB. That earned ASUU instant support from a public that was equally worried about the near collapse of university education.
It was a more united and determined ASUU that took on government in 1992. Unlike the 1988 episode, the May 25 strike action that followed a fruitless two-month negotiation engulfed virtually all the universities on day one. It was suspended five days later to allow the Industrial Arbitration Panel, IAP, look into the dispute. When the action resumed in July, it elicited the same prompt response from the branches. The government responded by applying the same old method of coming down hard on ASUU. Two days after the July 22 re-banning of ASUU, Vice President Augustus Aikhomu acted like a Lagos landlord: He issued a 24-hour quit notice to striking lecturers living in university quarters. That did not move the lecturers.
ASUU had read the government very well. Weeks before the ban, the union had worked out details of a new body – National Association of University Teachers, NAUT – render the proscription of ASUU ineffective. It reached out to human rights groups and distributed “Strike Bulletin” which admonished members not to be cowed by threats from government. According to one of the “Five If's” of the bulletin: “Legally, as tenants, we are entitled to stay in university houses for at least three months even if we are dismissed. It is not possible to physically eject 8,000 academics.”
Dolapo Akinsanya, a Lagos high court judge, to whom Jega complained on behalf of his colleagues, agreed. A strike task force was set up in most campuses to deal with saboteurs. In several universities, students, in solidarity with their lecturers, formed a protective shield around the lecturers’ quarters. In Jos, Ebele Amadi, wife of the deputy vice chancellor of the University of Jos, Unijos, and other lecturers’ wives, demonstrated around town in support of ASUU. A peace meeting of “representatives” of the universities called by Fafunwa was largely unsuccessful as ASUU leaders shunned it. Jega and his colleagues were prepared to fight to the end.
The government was panicky. It stopped talking tough but rather appealed to well meaning Nigerians to plead with striking lecturers. A number of eminent Nigerians called for truce. Ibrahim Dasuki, the Sultan of Sokoto, offered to broker the peace talks. ASUU insisted it was fighting a patriotic cause and was, therefore, ready for peaceful resolution of the crisis that paralysed the universities. But there was a catch. Said Jega: “If government is genuinely interested in funding solutions to the impasse, it should recognise the genuine representations of the academic staff of universities and negotiate with them.”
Eventually, the government/ASUU negotiation team got back to the conference table. Every point in the lecturers’ shopping list was well articulated with supporting data. When government berated the union for parading the fat salaries of their colleagues in poorer African countries without considering the inflationary rates in such countries, Jega replied swiftly: “The market for academics is international because research materials, books, journals, etc are not published here.” He then quoted the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, salary structure to prove that salaries of academics are horrible even at home. At the bank, the starting point for s senior supervisor is N40,000 in a year, while his equivalent in the university (a graduate assistant) earned N6,894. A professor was on a salary of N14,280 yearly, as against N135,000 for a CBN director.
The government negotiation team was persuaded that the university teachers had a good case. It proposed a 45 percent increase across the board. That was only 25 percent of the basic salary demanded by ASUU. Besides, the government proposal was silent on allowances for books, journals and research materials. ASUU turned down the gesture, breaking up the negotiation May 12.
The government complicated matters the next day when Senas Ukpanah, former minister of establishment, announced a salary package under which the highest paid academic staff would earn N83,000 yearly. To Jega, that was “an act of bad faith” as it did not represent the N44,000 starting point for a graduate assistant which the government reportedly made available to the union during earlier negotiation.
ASUU lost the protest. The agreement, signed September 3, placed a fresh graduate assistant on a yearly package of about N36,000, a great improvement on the former N6,894. A professor, who used to take home N19,280 in a year, is now worth between N70,000 and N100,000. A revolving housing loan scheme of N200,000 per beneficiary was also approved. According to Fafunwa, the implementation of the September 3 agreement will cost about N2 billion.
In a year that recorded a low price for petroleum product on the spot market (an average of $18 per barrel as against $21 projected in the 1992 budget), this seems a huge financial burden. The payment of the new salary package is already causing ripples in state universities which are in financial distress. Edo State University is still looking around for the N7.2 million salary arrears of its academic staff. Many state universities are pleading to pay 50 percent of the salary package.
The burden is not for governments alone to bear. By the agreement, industrial and commercial concerns are to contribute a pre-tax profit of five percent to an education fund. All universities would be entitled to draw from this fund. If all goes well, such funds would go a long way to substantially redress the inadequacies on the campuses. This is one big feather to the cap of ASUU under the leadership of Jega.
Jega is a study in paradox. His iron will was the push for ASUU during the last crisis. Yet, he bends to majority will. His colleagues at ASUU think of him as a democrat. Says Muazu Mohammed Yusuf, chairman of the Bayero University branch of ASUU: “At the level of ASUU, we acknowledge his ability to conform to democratic principles. In spite if the political environment created by the Babangida regime, which is partly of suppression of opinion and coercion, the democratic principles enshrined in the banned ASUU remains the source of our strength. The last strike was rooted in the popular support of every member of the union. At the meeting of ASUU, if there is contrary opinion, he considers it.” Having reached a popular decision, he follows doggedly the resolution without looking back.”
If every newsmaker were to hold on to the same principles as Jega, people-oriented publications would have run out of business. He does not talk about himself. The Newswatch team that spoke to him on two occasions recently applied all the tricks in the books but Jega stood firm on his resolve.
Newswatch: Now, let’s get to know about Dr Attahiru Jega, the private man...
Jega: (cuts in) I warned you, if this interview is about my person, you won’t get anywhere.
Newswatch: It is necessary for us to know what kind of childhood you had. At what point did you develop this radical posture...
Jega: (cuts in again) Radical? I don’t know what you mean by that.
Newswatch: You mean you’re not a radical, someone who desires change?
Jega: It’s not necessary to answer that question. Next question.
Newswatch: Okay, who are the lecturers that inspired you to make a career in...
Jega: No, I won’t answer that.
Newswatch: You graduated in 1978 during the Ali-Must-Go era. What role did you play?
Jega: That is not necessary.
Newswatch: You should tell us. Isn’t there a link between the role you play as ASUU president and your...
Jega: (cuts in again) Should there be a link? I think that has come out of a very uncritical consumption of Freudian psychology which tends to attribute people’s idea and practice with their own basic historical origin and socialisation process and I think it is a very faulty psychology. It is not only counter-productive, it is diversionary and I think as a nation, as an under-developed, neo-colonial country, we have had enough of diversions. We should spare ourselves those kinds of diversion. That is why I think that it does not serve any useful purpose for us to study, particularly, the personality of somebody who is barely 30.
Such modesty from a man who, at only 35, has walked his way into the hall of fame as Newswatch Man of the Year, 1992.
With Tony Iyare, Jonah Achema and Akanimo Udo-Akagha
INTERVIEW
‘Ideas, Not the Person, Interest Me’
By Muyiwa Akintunde
Attahiru Jega, national president of the proscribed Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, spoke for over two hours with Newswatch’s assistant editors, Muyiwa Akintunde and Tony Iyare on the decay of the universities, the ASUU struggle and related issues. Excerpts:
Newswatch: It was quite possible for you to live a quiet life as a lecturer. Why did you choose to get involved in the ASUU struggle?
Jega: Anybody who has been in the Nigerian university system since the 1970s would have witnessed tremendous changes in the system. These changes were profoundly negative. There has been profound deterioration of physical facilities. There has been inadequacies of these facilities. There has been more or less intellectual stagnation because of lack of books and journals and materials. So anybody who has been in this system has only two options really: either to leave it or struggle to improve it. Many of our colleagues probably felt that the state and successive governments have been unconcerned about education; that our priorities have been misplaced; that although no serious country ever develops without paying attention to education in general and to universities in particular; that in Nigeria, our leaders don’t seem to give a damn about what happens to education. This is a serious dereliction of responsibility. And many of our colleagues, having been so trained, many people in the universities cannot be paupers by choice. Anybody who leaves the university system with a Ph.D can walk into any area of economy and still survive. So, many people who could not wait to struggle took the other option of checking out. They either check out and remain in other sectors of the Nigerian economy and still do better than they were doing in the university or they even check out of the country because, as intellectuals, we are internationally competitive. And they do even much better than they could have done if they had remained in the country.
But for some of us, the first option, we thought, was not in the interest of this country, because if everybody runs away from a problem, then in the end, that problem catches and encapsulates the whole nation. At a point, somebody has to say: “Look, this problem has to be addressed and that we are prepared to contribute to finding the solutions to that problem.”
So my motivation, clearly, is that I have witnessed the massive deterioration in the Nigerian university system. At the time I joined the university, I had higher expectations. After a while, I went to study abroad and even saw what universities ought to be. And by the time I returned to this country, I found that even what I left, there was further deterioration and dilapidation of the system than it had been when I was first there. At that point, since I was not prepared to leave. I decided that I will contribute in any way I can to find a solution to the problem that confronts us as a nation, particularly in the area of education.
Newswatch: What are the factors for the decline? Are you saying government should carry all the blame for the decline?
Jega: Oh, yes! First of all, education is a fundamental right. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The United Nations itself recognises that. But for Third World countries in particular, it is even more important as a right because an illiterate nation is a doomed nation. At the level of literacy, broad universal education is a fundamental right and every serious government must give it priority. At another level, if you want to develop, you must use those who have skills, those who have training, in order to build your own repository of manpower and skill for the development processes of the country. And that means that universities must be recognised as significant to national development and they must be given the priority they deserve. Universities, without sounding patronising or in any way condescending, are the single largest collection of people with skills and training for invention, research and for training the manpower needs of any country. So, once you ignore that, obviously you are doing that at the expense of the development of the country.
Unfortunately, most of our governments simply do not care. People are more interested in putting money in where they can get contracts and get something out of it. They are not interested in spending for classrooms or chemicals and laboratories and for buying books for people to study or for funding research.
In the context of successive military regimes in this country, there is even a profound anti-intellectual disposition, apparently based on their inferiority complex. Anybody who criticised them, they interpret it in the military context of an enemy. If you are against us, then it means you are an enemy. And intellectuals are people who do not take things for granted. They question things, enquire into things and take principled positions and military culture does not allow for that. And so, many military regimes in this country simply identify intellectuals as extremists, enemies of progress, subversives, and therefore, perhaps by so doing, consciously or unconsciously, also neglected education.
Newswatch: How far did the agreement with government address the problems?
Jega: The agreement we signed with government attempted to address some of these problems. But a lot more needs to be done. And that is why we are even much more worried by the fact that government is not implementing the agreement with the seriousness it deserves. We hope that these problems will be resolved, otherwise the problem that we are trying to resolve will remain with us and that more profound crisis will also be generated in the system. Crisis in the universities is not in the interest of this country and government has to do everything to avoid it. We have been showing remarkable restraint, for example, even over the implementation of the agreement. We signed an agreement which everybody, including government, believes was in the national interest. You agree on so many things that need to be done but not more than 20 percent of that agreement has been implemented. So, that gives one a cause for concern. We will continue to show restraint but there is a limit really to how far things can go.
Newswatch: You said earlier that a lot still needs to be done to stop the rot in the universities. What else are you worried about?
Jega: It is true that our conditions of service have improved as a result of the agreement. But, still, we believe very strongly and we are yet to be convinced to the contrary, that academic staff, even under the new package, are not being compensated for the value of the service they offer to this country. There is a very serious disequilibrium in the wage structure in this country. And unless a total review of that wage structure is undertaken, a proper demarcation of the remunerations of the different sectors of the Nigerian economy will continue to be problematic. Secondly, we agreed, for example, on the criteria for funding of the universities and what we consider to be the quantum of need, that is the minimum amount of money needed to fund the universities. What we agreed upon was bare minimum because we were all operating under the assumption that Nigeria is now in very difficult times and that everybody has to sacrifice and so on. If we want this country to develop, we cannot keep things at minimum level and expect it to produce the best. That is why we said what is contained in that agreement is a good beginning, it is an excellent beginning.
And then, of course, there are also certain inactions on the part of government that are making many of our colleagues to come to the conclusion that there is demonstration of bad faith. For example, people could not understand why the ban on ASUU has not been lifted up till today. We have shown goodwill, we have shown that everything that we have done is in the national interest. So why should the ban on ASUU not be lifted?
Newswatch: You insist that you will not talk about yourself. What is the guiding principle for this attitude?
Jega: Well, I don’t know. I think over time, maybe thorough my training, through my socialisation, I have come to the conclusion that our country can only move forward if we stop discussing personality and personal issues and we start discussing issues as issues. I think people should be more interested in the ideas that a person professes. What he wants to contribute and what he wants to do, rather than his background and what makes him as a person. If you have good ideas, if you have good, substantive contributions, then generations will live to benefit from those. So when we talk to somebody, when we become interested in somebody, we should become interested because of what he believes, because of the ideas that he represents, not because of his background and how he became what he is. I think once we begin to move from that, this country will move.
