Chairman of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, University of Ilorin chapter, Olushola Falowo, speaks to DANIEL AYANTOYE on the union’s strike and disagreement with the Federal Government
Your union recently ended a seven-day warning strike. Don’t you think this would have affected academic activities and the students?
There is no way it would not have affected academic activities and that was why SSANU as a union was reluctant to go on strike. I am very sure that you must have been following events from last month. For more than a month now, the national leadership of SSANU has been in the media, trying to avert the strike. You can imagine that the salary that we are paid currently was last reviewed in 2009. And when that 2009 agreement was concluded, they said the agreement would be reviewed every three years. You can now see how many three years are between 2009 and 2024.
Now, if you compare the value of money, how much was transportation fare in 2009 and how much is it now? How much was a bag of rice in 2009 and how much is it now? If you remember very well, in 2009, a bag of rice was N6,000. Even before 2009, it was N4,000. But I can remember that I bought it for N6,000. That same bag is over N90,000 now. How do you expect somebody who is on this kind of salary to cope in this period? You know how much the pump price of petrol was in 2009 and how much it has become now. So, this is one reason why we said the government of Nigeria should be more sensitive to the welfare of workers. It is the insensitivity of the Nigerian government that led us to the level that we are today.
There were concerns about the effect of the strike on students, especially with what recently happened at the Federal University, Oye Ekiti, where a student who had asthma, was said to have died because he could not be taken to the clinic as the facility was under lock and key as a result of the strike. What is your take on that?
It is quite unfortunate, and it is sad. We pray that God will give the family the fortitude to bear the loss. It is not something that we are happy about. But let’s come to think of it, in a university where there are four unions, three of these unions are the ones that do everything in the university except to go to class and teach. They (the government) tried to use divide and rule and pay those who go to class which is the Academic Staff Union of Universities but left the three other unions without paying them. What is the government’s intention of doing that?
We continue to say it that there are saboteurs in the government of President Bola Tinubu. Some people somewhere don’t want this government to be successful. That is why we don’t know the people that are behind this payment. The information that we have is that the President approved a waiver to pay all the staff at the university. He did not say go and pay ASUU alone. Who took that decision to subvert the directive of the President? What is their intention? Unfortunately, the incident happened, and it is regrettable, but I don’t think we have a choice.
Let me tell you something. You, the reporters, have to investigate this too. Now, the four months (withheld) salary is an agreement that we had with the government of the then President Buhari, the Minister of Labour and Social Development, Senator Chris Ngige, and the Minister of Education at that time, Professor Adamu Adamu. Now, in that period, you can see that our counterpart, ASUU, did not agree at all. But most of us in SSANU and ASUU are administrators; we know the rules of engagement. We know that when the negotiation door is opened, let us negotiate, and when the door was opened, we went to the table with both the then Minister of Education and Minister of Labour and Productivity, and we had eight listed agreements, signed, and publicised in the media.
One of the agreements we had was that they owed us four months which they were to pay us. I want to believe that was the reason the money they paid now was four months. ASUU’s withheld salary was eight months. So, if it is four months, and they said, go and pay them, will the government now pay those that did not have an agreement with them? It is SSANU and NASU that had an agreement with the government. We are happy that ASUU was paid because they are our friends. We are in the same system together but when injustice is being meted on us, the government cannot expect us to keep quiet.
So, you believe this was deliberately carried out by the Federal Government as a divide and rule?
Exactly! Not for our union alone. They are using it to disturb the educational system in Nigeria. The only institution that remains for the common man is the university. So, if they allow the university to split out of the reach of the common man, then there is nothing Nigerians will gain as long as government patronage is concerned in this country. Already they are destroying the university system little by little. It must not be split out of the reach of the common man.
Some have blamed the labour unions for their excessive strikes. Can’t there be other ways to make demands on the government other than embarking on strike?
Those saying that should provide those other ways. I have engaged many people on this matter, and nobody has come up with any concrete thing. What are we going to do? If there is no strike, the only thing remaining is engagement. Even the World War, which is the most serious war ended on the negotiation table. No war can be solved on the battlefield. When you now try to call the government to the negotiation table and they refuse to, you know that immediately you go on strike, they will call you. What will you do? Listen, SSANU are always very reluctant to go on strike. You bear witness that we try to avoid the strike. We are just being pushed right now. And
I earlier said it was unfortunate that strike remained the only language that our government would understand. You can see that they have called us to the table. Why did they wait until we went on strike before they called us to the meeting? So, why is our government doing this to workers? And it is not only the university system; they have always been very insensitive to the welfare of the workers.
All of us should come together to condemn this act of injustice and this act of insensitivity. You can see that the minute we went on strike, the second day, they called us to the negotiation table. So, those propagating that theory for other options other than strike should come up with any other way but for now, that is the language we are adopting because I think you talk to people in the language you best understand.
The clamour for a new minimum wage has generated several controversies as workers have insisted that the current one is no longer relevant. What is your position on this?
There is no confusion on this matter. It is very straightforward. The Nigerian workers are clamouring for a new minimum wage because of the situation we have found ourselves in. I just told you how much a bag of rice is as of today. The minimum wage as we are talking now is N30,000. If somebody is taking N30,000 monthly, the money cannot take care of his transportation in a month alone. Before you now talk of house rent, children’s school fees, feeding, and other circumstances.
You must transport yourself from your home to your office every day. The government said if you take or give bribes; if you engage in corruption, you will be penalised or even be dismissed from your work. They don’t want you to engage in corrupt practices and that salary cannot even take you out of the gate of the university. So, that is justification for the minimum wage agitation.
The Nigeria Labour Congress demanded N1m as minimum wage while some have argued that it is unrealistic. How much do you think it should be?
I don’t blame those who clamour for N1m. As a worker in Nigeria, you will want to build your house, buy a car, you will want to send your children to the best schools and live fine. If you must engage in all these things, N1m cannot do it in a month. Be it as it may, I am a very realistic person, an accountant. I know that we cannot say the minimum wage should be N1m. I may not have the accurate data to give you the accurate amount but realistically, without analysing the data, if the minimum wage is put in at N200,000, it will not be too much. But I know that it should not be less than N100,000.
I am talking without data now but those who have the data, know how much Nigeria’s income is in a month, and how much it can put in because it will not be good when overhead is even more than the capital budget, or personnel is more than the capital budget. So, we have to put more in the capital budget so that it will translate back into the welfare of workers. If that is it, the government should try as much as possible to make sure that they do the right thing. The reality is that the current minimum wage cannot take us even to the gate of our workplace not to speak of taking us to our homes and back to work.
There are reports on the inadequate funding of the tertiary institution by the Federal Government. How will you address the current situation?
The university is a universal entity and comparing Nigerian universities to universities all over the world, we are lagging seriously. We are not even among the number 1,000 in the world. You can see that it’s a serious thing. The bane of our problem in this country is funding. The UNESCO benchmark of around 20% or 25% of the budget for education has not been met by any government of Nigeria. If the government adopts the UNESCO benchmark, it will go a long way. It should not be the function or headache of the unions to start clamouring for the funding of universities that the government established.
Unfortunately, with the proliferation of universities all over the country, if we join all these universities together, they cannot get to the first position in the world. So, what is the essence of creating universities all over the country? The university that we are creating cannot even match up with anyone. Is it not the same university system that we are complaining of withheld salary? How can you impoverish the staff members of your university and expect them to match up with the other universities across the world?
So, this is what we are saying, that we have to fund our universities. The government should take funding of education as a priority because a non-informed nation will be a very deformed nation. So, we can just be informed by making sure that we give education priority. The issue of funding the universities should not be left to the university union alone. All Nigerians, including the media, should join in the campaign to make the government realise that they must fund education.
But a former chairman of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of State-owned Universities, Yusuf Ali (SAN) said in many other countries, the government does not fund universities but individuals. Do you think Nigeria is ready for that?
In my opinion, Nigeria is not ready for that. Do you know why? Those individuals funding universities outside the country, do they have their private universities there? They don’t have. They are funding the government universities and the community universities. But in Nigeria now, those who should be called upon to come and fund our universities have their various universities all over the country. So, they will just convert this government university into their private university, or they run it the way they will run the private universities and it will now go out of the reach of the poor. So, that’s why Nigeria’s situation is peculiar.
I don’t know why whatever works in other countries does not work in this country. I don’t know what is wrong with us. In this country, if you are passionate about our country, you sit down and you start crying. That’s what is wrong with my country for God’s sake. All these our leaders go abroad, know what is obtainable there. They see the way they operate, but back in Nigeria, they will not be able to replicate what they saw there. Most of them that break the law here, when they get abroad, they abide by their law. I am only pleading with the media to make sure that we continue to carry this campaign together, and that the government should stop establishing more universities. They should fund existing universities well.
Let us match up with other universities in the world and have a reasonable position between one to 10 best universities in the world. Just like the vision of my Vice Chancellor, Prof Wahab Egbewole, that the University of Ilorin should be Number One in Nigeria, Number 10 in Africa, and Number 100 in the world. So, you can see that this is the vision. If the government can have this vision Nigerian universities should be Number One in Africa, and maybe 15th in the world. By that time, we will have a lot of foreign students coming to Nigeria like before to study instead of what we have now where several Nigerians are trooping out to get an education because Nigerian education is not comparable to anywhere in the world.
The ‘Japa’ syndrome has created a big vacuum in the university workforce amid the ban on recruitment. How bad is the situation and what do you think should be done to address it?
It is very bad. It is affecting all aspects of Nigerian sectors. There’s no way it’s not affecting. So, the University of Ilorin cannot be an exception. We are experiencing it too and in fact, it’s everywhere. The reason why this thing is happening is due to the unfavourable policies of the government towards education. You can see that doctors are also affected. When most of them complete their university education and residency and now compare what they will earn in Nigeria to that of abroad, they will prefer to go abroad.
Those who are already in the workforce in the country also compare what their colleagues that they are on the same level are earning. When these people go out and come back and you see how their lives have improved, there is no way you will not be moved. People like us, if not for our love for this country, we would have gone because our mates are there doing better. We are not happy with the way things are and getting more difficult and worse year in and year out.
