Gbolahan,You have spoken well. I may quibble with one or two things, but you have spoken well. The cyclical dance of strike-concessions-new/old demands-strike-concessions cannot be sustained. Something has to give. Perhaps it will take ASUU being ignored and even heckled by the Nigerian public for the union to get the message that episodic, fairly predictable striking is a tired template of struggle. More fundamentally, the idea of a national union bargaining and winning perks and concessions on behalf of ALL Nigerian university lecturers regardless of their geographical location, their institutional affiliations, the economic and existential peculiarities of their location, and their individual performance and accomplishments (or lack thereof) in the core areas of teaching and research is totally passe. I know of no other country where this outmoded, tyrannical model is at play. It is a system that unjustly applies the same reward system to every academic without regard to competence/incompetence, excellence/mediocrity, ethical laxity/ethical discipline, and other metrics of evaluation. It offers no incentive or reward to the lecturer who is productive, committed, and is constantly improving his/her teaching and research crafts. And it cajoles and protects the incompetent, unproductive lecturer or accidental academic with no commitment to their work. It neither punishes nor discourages unprofessional behavior and laziness; instead it says to the lazy, incompetent, and unethical lecturer, "you'll get to keep your job and benefit EQUALLY from any windfall ASUU wins for its members as long as you remain a dues paying member." ASUU has transitioned from being a principled intercessor in the crisis of higher education to being a refuge for folks who absolutely have no business being in the academy, folks so lacking in the temperament and core skills required for academic business that their universities would lose nothing if they were fired.Yesterday, I posted a compellingly argued blog post of a young, recent Nigerian graduate discussing the ASUU problem. The usual suspects who waffle and deflect when it comes to ASUU have not challenged the blogger's carefully argued points. I have discussed my own experiences and observations as an undergraduate in Nigeria in the mid to late 1990s, a modified version of which I am reposting below. There has been no substantive retort, only empty bluster."Today, it is perhaps only in some of our private institutions that lecturers and teachers are required to submit elaborate courseware replete with week by week iteration of lecture topics, recommended textbooks, sample tutorial questions to guide the students; and a clear mapping of the disciplinary terrain to be traversed. A society is reinforced in the values it promotes."----Ayo Olukotun
A great summation of the absence of quality instruction in our universities. However, this does not even go far enough to capture the tragedy of poor instruction in our universities. You talk of preparation, planning, and meticulous and up-to-date lecture notes. What if I tell you that when I was an undergrad in Nigeria in the mid nineties, most of the lecturers didn't have a syllabus that outlined the topical scope, readings, and assignments rubrics of the class. Why? Simple: they were not required to have one and knew that they could get away with not designing a syllabus and teaching on the fly if they taught at all. Their incomepetence, along with their job, was protected by ASUU. They did not have to justify their earnings, their performance was of no consequence to their continued employment, and, thanks to their ASUU membership they could not be fired for poor performance. Also, several of our lecturers came to class ONCE or TWICE a semester and simply passed around handouts that we had to buy, and then, at the end of the semester, they showed up to administer exams. Often the handouts were simply photocopies of book chapters or sections, but God help you if you didn't buy the handout on account of possessing the book from which it was drawn. Some of the lecturers even delegated the administration of the exams, making them absentee lecturers par excellence. Studing for some exams was a wild guessing game since, in the absence of coherent and comprehensive syllabi, one was not sure what materials the exams were going to be based on. It was terrible. Not only that, they routinely lost students' exam scripts, causing many students to repeat classes they shouldn't have had to, and in some cases delaying students' graduation. About half of my Faculty class who took some electives had an extra semester tacked on to their education because some incompetent, disorganized lecturers did not submit their result in time for them to join the rest of us for NYSC. Others had cases of missing exam scripts and missing results in their final years, delaying their graduation for a whole year! None of the lecturers or exam officers involved in these colossal acts of dereliction was ever reprimanded, and it's been business as usual. If they lose your exam scripts, records of your continuous assessments, or fail to submit your grade in time for NYSC, tough luck. You go and sit at home, make the occasional trips to campus to plead with the stuck-up lecturers involved to have have mercy on you and try to locate your missing document. Thanks to ASUU and its equal opportunity protection of incompetence, laziness, and ethical violations, nothing gets done about this even as the offending lecturers are assured of partaking in the next largesse along with their serious, committed, ethically sound, and productive colleagues. How does this ASUU-enabled system serve the interests of our students?Tragically, we now describe that period as something of a pre-crisis phase in Nigerian higher education since by all indications the situation has worsened since the 1990s.And yet, we see nothing, zilch, nada, about performance and instructional accountability in ASUU's menu of issues.--
On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 1:41 AM, Gbolahan Gbadamosi <gbola.gbadamosi@gmail.com> wrote:ASUU, ASUU, ASUU - how many times did I call you?
I do not want to be drawn into the debate of whether Ikhide has used the right language or not in his ASUU expose – it is his prerogative. I would not use the same language but it only proves that we are all different people rather than one is right or wrong, good or bad. But I digress.
There is much culpability one can apportion to the Nigerian government and the irresponsible ruling elite on how the Nigerian educational system, nay Universities, arrived at this point - absolute decadence and incomparable impenitence. I have 'cracked' my brain on how best to capture and translate the following proverb or is it a popular Yoruba adage "ti omode ba nse bi omode, agba a si se bi agba" but I failed simply because I think in my mother tongue, but I'll give it a go literarily. "If a child is behaves in an immature manner, the elderly do not join in". I suppose I will get help with the translation in the forum from people who can do it better. But again, I digress.
What ASUU has in a way achieved using the strike weapon since the 1980s they have since thrown away because of its refusal as a body in do a sincere and thorough introspection. I suppose if you use a weapon continuously and you do not get the result you want you should change strategy but ASUU has not. Like an insensitive drummer who keeps inviting people to a performance in the market centre every day until people are tired of his drumming, one day ASUU will look behind and will find no one – in this case not even the original core member. It is time for a rethink of style.
Part of the problem is that some of the hard core "supporters" of ASUU and its failed strategy are too sensitive and defensive. They cannot take a punch, they will not allow the others side of the argument, not even a devils' advocate to enhance the quality of ASUU's deliberation. If they are honest with themselves they should at least in private (if they do not want to do it in public) tell the leadership of ASUU enough is enough. Historically, there was a time ASUU lost membership of Universities of Lagos and Ilorin branches briefly due to the strategic approach in achieving ASUU's objectives. Let ASUU not be deceived that they have students and parents support because they do not. Let ASUU not even think they have the support of the entire academic staff, I am aware they do not and if I take a guess not even the majority.
The danger of the ongoing impasse for the future credibility of ASUU is for them to lose this fight to the politicians they blame for all the woes of the nation and indirectly for the large menace university education has become. There are options open to our legislators re ASUU. I hope they will not take it because the consequences are dire but I am more inclined to think they will not take it because there will be no big "money bags" to be shared. From the stories we have read in the Newspapers since 1999 the Nigeria legislators seems more excited when there is a financial inducement from the executive arm in the enactment of any legal statute.
· Nigeria operates an opting out system for union membership. This means you are automatically a member of ASUU as an academic staff unless you opt out by informing your employer in writing. Most ASUU members do not know they have this right so they do not use it.
· The unions, including ASUU, also benefit from an automatic check-off system which allows universities to collect union dues on behalf of ASUU from members (staff) salaries and remit to ASUU. In most other countries since you opt in rather than out, union membership is voluntary and as an academic staff you will join the union and remit dues directly to your union. It is not the business of the universities.
· Unions, including ASUU, do necessarily have to vote before calling strikes. In Nigeria, the national executive committee often do the voting on behalf of members even if majority of members do not necessarily support the strike. In many countries, there will be a ballot that will be publicly known and clear advance notice for the strike. To be fair ASUU gives notice too.
· Finally, for everyday of strike there is no pay. The Nigerian labour laws, like most other countries, stipulate this. Members are thus clearly aware of the consequence of a strike but are happy to support it for the greater good, albeit for a short period. Consequently, in many countries strikes are for a few days at the most – not several months. How does one survive for several months with bills and mortgage to pay in many countries? But lucky ASUU, they can eat their cake and have it – strike but still get paid. This is where I have my greatest grievance with ASUU – the duration of strikes, the seeming irreversibility of it.
Let consider the alternative scenario which is what operates in most other countries including many African countries, where – ASUU members are not automatic members of ASUU but will voluntarily register with ASUU from say tomorrow to join; send monthly cheques or bank standing orders to pay dues; vote before every strike; and be aware that if they do not work for 3 or 4 months (the length of current strike) – then they will not be paid. How many ASUU members will be left standing? Stand up and let's take a count please?
There is no country that I know where citizens and residents are entirely satisfied with the university educational system and all it portends. There is always a struggle for improvement but they know when to pull the plug, ASUU does not. I have struggled to find a country where universities are closed for upward of 6 months in nearly every 2-3 years and I cannot find anyone in recent memory. ASUU has easily done several 3, 4, 6 and more months of strike at a go. When the strike is ongoing as it is now in Nigeria public universities, do colleagues report exceptional research outputs to justify the salary collected for the several months when teaching did not take place? I do not think so.
I should not be misunderstood as anti-ASUU but the game has changed, ASUU should be told if they lose this fight because politicians opt for the scenario I have just enacted above it would be a shame that in a chess game of the brain and not the brawl ASUU lost and politicians won. Trust me, one day as our people say "monkey go go market e no go return" – a word is enough for the wise.
Gbolahan Gbadamosi
Bournemouth, UK
On 23 September 2013 19:59, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
--Prof,You have said it and you have said it well, I took your write-up before my great spell-check and you excelled yourself sef, I even forgive you all the digs and yabis at my dignity, now wahala. Know this, Ikhide and all those who rail against ASUU are not mad people, there is something really wrong somewhere. And the time for polite talk is long past. I ignore calls for analysis, prattle, prattle, prattle, and simply say it like I am feeling it. Just so you know, I am a consumer of whatever product ASUU dishes out. I have paid a lot of money for the education of relatives. I can assure you that I am not happy with the results, far from it.I have responded to your thoughts earlier, but I wanted to say to you, ASUU's leadership could use your literary skills and temperament, THAT is one of my points. ASUU's communication has been wholly inarticulate. I am not the only one that feels that way. As for that professor that has eloped to Goodluck Jonathan's village, I shall be seeing him soon and we will have a belly laugh or two over your characterization of his temperament!Be well, man!- IkhideStalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/Follow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhideFrom: "shina73_1999@yahoo.com" <shina73_1999@yahoo.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; xokigbo@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2013 8:26 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ASUU is on strike again! Who cares? SMH
"ASUU is on strike again. Who cares? They are thugs, they are always on strike, nobody seems to know why, except that it involves being paid a boatload of money by their counterparts, those thieves euphemistically called the Nigerian government. ASUU. My contempt for that body of narcissistic thugs knows no bounds.". Ikhide--
Oga Ikhide,
I salute you!
I suspect you must be having a wonderful time with the ruckus that your ASUU post is raking up all over the net. It seems to me that you go to this length sometime to shore up your reputation as an 'irreverent' critic-of African literature and African intellectuals. However, it seem that, even for me, this ASUU summation is irreverence gone too far and too off.
Two issues on my mind: first is your fallacious summation of ASUU membership as a body of thugs, and second is your reduction of the ASUU industrial action to a mere struggle for money.
FIRST:
1. I am an ASUU member. And I subscribe to this industrial action in the hope that some concessions, however meagre, can be seized and deployed towards the rehabilitation of the Nigerian educational system. Just like your vaunted claim of being part of a sterling educational system in the US, we are also here, right in the trenches of a degenerating system, making gigantic efforts to scrape the best we can from it. There are people here who love this system, who are giving it their effort and attentio; those who have fought and those still fighting. For us, teaching is a ministry, a spiritual mandate, that will not allow us to take advantage of those entrusted into our care. I confront young minds everyday in the line of duty, and I am daily afraid-as to what they'll turn out to become within the constraint of hopelessness and institutional decay. Isn't this enough to fight for? I suspect you hold your own duty to that kind of sacred standard that would make me want to entrust my child to your care. There are people here too, in their hundreds, who take their duty with solemnity-they won't sleep with students, exhort money from them, refuse to attend and teach classes, sell handouts, or commit other nefarious acts. I won't grudge you your responsibilities over there; yet I wonder what is responsible for this often unsavoury remarks about 'African intellectuals' and their abdication of their duty? As if nothing is ever happening? As if all 'African intellectuals' have sold their souls to Western imperialism and colonisation?
2. Having made that point, let me also say my membership of ASUU does not blind me to its follies and weaknesses. I rage and fume regularly. And, again, I am not alone here. Several people are in agony over the internal anomalies that are daily eroding ASUU's moral capital in a country bereft of a civil society vanguard that could speak truth to power. However, speaking truth to power ought to commence with speaking truth to oneself. I have often wondered why the ASUU-NEC is not wise to the need to make ASUU a national conscience that agitates for transformations within and without, rather than being satisfied with the perception of the body as being solely concerned with strikes and salaries (the mistake you've apparently also fallen into; and, it would seem, due to no entire fault of yours). There are rampant incidences of rogue lecturers, discrepancies in teaching schedule of individual teachers, scandals involving grades and ladies, low quality teaching, digital illiteracy, etc. Yet ASUU-NEC is content with the body's status as a government nemesis which lacks the moral weight of a Nemesis. If we eventually succeed in forcing the government to engage its responsibilities, will our gains not be frittered away through the black hole of our internal contradictions?
3. Yet, I am still an ASUU member, and would not do a wholesale demonisation of the entire ASUU body. This is why that summation appals me. By 'that body of narcissistic thugs', what do you really intend? I suspect you reference the entire ASUU membership present. But, since ASUU is a union body with legal continuity (and since your grouse didn't begin today), does your atrocious summation not also capture ASUU members past-Jeyifo, Osundare, Eskor Toyo and other intellectual worthies who have bemoaned and fought for what they believe the Nigerian educational system can achieve within the development dynamics in Nigeria? Or, maybe you intend just the leadership of ASUU? Even that would excuse your irreverent reductionism. By what stretch of the imagination can a body of thousands of intellectuals be called narcissists or thugs? That summation is irreverence gone too far and too bad. We may bear your literary criticism; this present summation flies in the face of logic and the empirical.
4. It is a logical and empirical fact that there ought to be more to a body than what you read about or perceive in its modus operandi(since you aren't part of the system you critique so trenchantly). Yet, you neglect that logical point and conveniently wrapped yourself up in a composition fallacy which fails to disambiguate the faults of the few from the attributes of the whole.
5. It should be an interesting research to ransack the deep recesses of your personal and intellectual history in search of that juncture where you picked your disillusionment with the 'African intellectuals'. I wonder how you'll describe yourself-an American intellectual? Does that save you from your own wholesale mudslinging?
Second:
I feel so depressed that you only perceive the industrial action as only a struggle to be 'paid a boatload of money' in a case of thieves paying thugs who both neglect the consequence of their brigandage on the future of innocent children.
Pardon my moral ignorance, but is there something inherently wrong with requesting for money you have earned? The earned allowances framework is a consequence of an agreement government signed. What would you have done in a similar situation Sir?
Being a good soul, I suspect you would have mobilised the entire ASUU team to let government be, think of the 'future' of the innocent students and return to work-in dystopian laboratories where kerosene stoves replace Bunsen burners, where 'libraries' lack recent books and journals, where classrooms haven't been updated with multimedia facilities, where personal pockets fund researches.
When I read Prof. Aluko's pragmatic suggestions for ending the strike, I wondered how two friends could be so far apart in intellectual temperament. I wonder also whether Jonathan shouldn't have seen the worth of the Prof as the next Education Minister rather than a VC. Well, not all eyes observe.
Permit me to rest my case while I await the spell check and grammar lesson. I tremble at the inevitable, stentorian and dismissive 'nonsense' that is certain to come. I won't also mind the booming silence.
Adeshina Afolayan
*can't afford to cycle away since my six-year old bicycle is worn out for lack of repair. So I'm grounded as it were*
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTNFrom: Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com>Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 08:49:57 -0700 (PDT)To: Toyin Falola<USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>; Ederi@yahoogroups.com<Ederi@yahoogroups.com>; krazitivity@yahoogroups.com<krazitivity@yahoogroups.com>ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comSubject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ASUU is on strike again! Who cares? SMH
The Academic Staff Union of Universities of Nigeria. ASUU. ASUU is on strike again. Who cares? They are thugs, they are always on strike, nobody seems to know why, except that it involves being paid a boatload of money by their counterparts, those thieves euphemistically called the Nigerian government. ASUU. My contempt for that body of narcissistic thugs knows no bounds. There is really not much one needs to say about how these rogues in academic robes have colluded with any government in power (AGIP) to defraud and rob generations of beautiful children what is their right – a good education. To say ASUU is on strike is to state the obvious, they are nearly always on strike, even when they are at work, they are on strike. Their members want to have sex with every child that walks into their pretend classrooms, when they have satisfied themselves, they pimp their helpless wards, yes, they do, to their friends, constipated generals and pot-bellied rogue-politicians who have too much money in their thieving pockets.
If you don't believe me, Farooq Kperogi has a disturbing piece here on the sexual harassment epidemic in Nigerian universities. You read that piece, and when you have stopped shuddering, you understand why fully less than 10 percent of Nigerian university dons have children living in that mess called Nigeria, let alone inside the filthy chicken coops that pass for classrooms from preschool to the tertiary level. In those criminal hovels, children of the poor and dispossessed are trapped and mis-educated by those whose children are being nurtured in the West. Their children will come back home from North America and Europe on holidays to the pretend suburbs of Abuja and Lagos island, wave a Cold Stone ice cream cone at the wreck built by their thieving parents and berate Nigerians for being wretched Nigerians. They often travel First Class. Ten percent? I made it up of course. I am a Nigerian intellectual. We are lazy like that. It could be less even.
Follow me, let's go to the silly website of ASUU right here. Let us visit their officers, all of them mean looking men, except for one harried looking token lady who has the cringe-worthy patronizing title of "welfare secretary." I am sure she does important things for the #OgasAtTheTop of ASUU. Maybe she is responsible for making pounded yam and bringing water so the men could wash their filthy hands. SMH. Yes, Nigeria is the patriarchy from hell, in Nigeria, misogyny reigns even in the 21st century and even among the men of the ivory tower. Hiss. Here's ASUU's list of men "leaders" and one token woman: Dr, Nasir Isa Fagge, president, Bayero University, Kano, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, Vice president, OOU Ago-Iwoye, Professor Ukachukwu Awuzie, immediate past president, IMSU, Owerri, Professor Victor Osodoke, financial secretary, MOUA Umudike, Dr. Ademola Aremu, treasurer, University of Ibadan, Professor. Daniel Gungula, internal auditor, MAUTech, Yola, Dr. Ralph Ofukwu, investment secretary, FUAM, Makurdi, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Iloh, welfare secretary, University of Benin, and Professor Israel Wurogji, legal advisor, University of Calabar. All the men and one woman have horrid looking pictures of themselves on the website, except for Professor Wurogii, ASUU's "legal advisor" who either is too lazy or too busy to provide one. He is perhaps genuinely afraid for his life – not from the SSS but from irate abused students who have spent the past decade trying to get an education from these thugs.- IkhideStalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/Follow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
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