By Henry A. Onwubiko, PhD
Of the numerous university strikes in the last three decades that I have encountered, none has been more loathsome than the preceding and present one. This was because most academic staff of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who had long anticipated from the first strike the payment of their Earned Allowance as one of the cardinal demands and benefits expected from these strikes, were robbed of a fraction of this money by their local leaders without their consent or evident approval. I too had anxiously expected this allowance to serve as a palliative to no avail, not only to regain my eroding paternal authority, but to dissipate the daily pains on the family inflicted by the coincidental and marauding Coronavirus contagion.
I discovered with dismay and to the disappointment of unsuspecting ASUU-UNN comrades that some members from the union branch executive in tandem with the University ruling oligarchy, without the individual and lawful consent of our members, had deducted from the earnestly awaited Earned Allowance of each Academic Staff a whopping N39, 000, amounting to a total sum of over N200 million from all members. Their shameless defence when confronted by their bemused victims was that “80 billion naira was recently embezzled by the Accountant General of the nation; Allah forgave him and by the grace of God, nothing will happen”. Karl Marx, the distinguished philosopher of political economy and world history had once noted that no great crime in history had ever been committed without religion.
These local branch leaders, having conditioned their members into trust and obedience with opening and closing prayers in union meetings covertly with the help of the oligarchy translated their insight by spuriously investing part of the Earned Allowance of their fellow comrades and buying shares for them from a company unknown to the workers, abbreviated as NUPENCOM. By their compassion and benevolence, these primitive accumulators would secure dividends to save their beloved workers from starvation to survive the strikes. To further console their striking colleagues, a printed list of names of other universities, presumed to be also engaged in the same chicanery abbreviated as OAU, FUK, UK, UNIPORT, ABU, Uni Abuja, etc; addressed from the Uni Abuja national secretariat of ASUU and authenticated with the nameless signatories of the investment convener and a chairman, with a dubious date that had expired after the consumption of the purloined Earned Allowance were enough to deceive the people and make this act of primitive accumulation sanctimonious and more credible. By what morality should a mother, branch executive or oligarchy consume the food of her infants to their peril to survive a strike?
With the long duration of these strikes that have brought immense suffering, the Nigerian people desire no more swindling from these tricksters and hoodlums. Perhaps of greatest importance is the imperative to banish and regulate in our federal and state universities the material and spiritual conditions of primitive accumulation spearheaded by the university ruling oligarchies who are the extended appendages of the corrupt Nigerian ruling class. This, by no means, exempts the Federal Government from its topmost responsibility, to use the present negotiations imposed by the strikes to budget and invest as a matter of the highest priority in university education; but it must not invest with its left hand only for its agents to rob the nation with the right hand through primitive accumulation.
The Nigerian ruling class with its chimeric political parties have the choice of investing in university education, for a future of economic independence, self reliance, black pride and power, not neo-colonialism, towing to white nationalism, or the schizophrenia from self-negation of bleaching, loss of confidence and dependence. Clearly, the poverty of our universities, inadequate infrastructure, the low quality of knowledge, research and teaching as well as the incessant strikes have led to an unending train of brain drain or migration of the most able Nigerian youths to Europe and the United States to boost their economies and national life or become mercenaries to their deadly wars while the unadaptable and unsuccessful youths return to Nigeria neocolonised and addicted with western hamburgers and narcotics to behave like freshly beheaded guinea fowls. In Nigeria on the other hand, the poor conditions of our universities at best only transform Nigerian youths not as producers and creators of value but as consumers of Western or Asian products; not into proud and creative pan African youths with confidence, but as agents to foreign dependence, neocolonialism, and their niggerification.
While there are great expectation from Nigerian students, their teeming guardians and university workers that the Federal Government this time, will deliver in the negotiations along with the leftover Earned Allowance, sufficient funds that match the demands for the revitalization and development of Nigerian universities; upgrading of infrastructure, adequate and not epileptic power supply; that boost the quality of research, science, technology, general knowledge and of course uplifting the general welfare of workers in a sustainable and humane environment, the students and university workers have the historical role as security agents to watch over the banditry of the organized ruling oligarchies by monitoring the internally and externally generated revenues and ensuring their appropriate utilization; protection of properties and all university resources belonging to the Nigerian people.
It can be recalled decades ago that Nigerian students and university workers with the academic staff at the vanguard courageously stood against the bayonets, decrees and bullets of Nigerian soldiers in the midwifery of the present corrupt ruling class during its delivery of the political parties from military rule. Unfortunately for the nation, the Academic Staff under the Academic Staff Union of Universities as well as the Student Unions in each university under the umbrella organization of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), have with the passing of each year of civilian rule been languidly disarmed by the ruling class and infected by them to join the process of primitive accumulation in the universities.
Students were not immune to this metamorphosis to surrender and join the ruling oligarchies for primitive accumulation. These days, motor vehicles belonging to NANS and procured with money from Nigerian students are used by NANS officials for private, commercial transport or political campaigns for members of the ruling class. Also, for the sake of money and primitive accumulation, some NANS agents recruit students to serve as thugs and ballot box snatchers during elections by party men also called men of the people. In all the campuses in Nigeria with its numerous student unions, NANS has abandoned its once bellicose role against military rule in guarding its freedom from the ruling oligarchies, to protecting the funds and resources of the Nigerian people in the universities from the greedy selfish and unpatriotic university ruling oligarchies and defending the human rights of students. These days, student union elections are computerized, not to minimize fraud but to enable agents of the ruling university oligarchies to shift or sell votes and manipulate the election results to suit their interests. Consequently, most of the elected leaders of the student unions and many of the executive members of NANS were not actually the genuine student leaders and in most cases do not reflect the will of students but the interest of the corrupt ruling class as reflected through the lenses of the university ruling oligarchies.
From the times of military rule to the present civilian democratic dispensation, the addition of every year has come with further descent of student power and an increase in the exploited wealth gathered by the oligarchy with its greater control of student union governments. Left unhindered, the organized power of Nigerian students would by now have won for students majority of seats in the university governing councils to enable them participate in various decisions affecting student lives in the universities. However, despite the very democracy NANS had courageously fought to win, it does not have representation to direct or monitor how the incoming funds allocated for revitalization and infrastructure, the internally generated and external revenues among others will be utilized by the university ruling oligarchies.
With the collapse of student power and erasure of the democratic process of checks and balance to contain the ruling university oligarchies from out-heroding Herod in corruption with the chicaneries of primitive accumulation of robbing our tertiary institutions into a vicious cycle of underdevelopment, what has happened to the organized power of the university working class, the Academic Staff (ASUU), the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), the Non Academic Staff Union (NASU) and the Association of Technologists (NAAT), with ASUU by virtue of its primary role in the production of knowledge at the vanguard? Recent studies of the current civilian dispensation show that these unions have with each additional year become the ghost of their former selves. This is because the university ruling oligarchies recognise their importance in the process of production of knowledge, graduation of students and above all their objective position and interest in securing communal properties, against their privatization, primitive accumulation in the interest of the ruling university oligarchies. Therefore, they invest heavily in cash or kind in the election of local branch executives who not only provide representatives of the working class as members of the Governing Council but are equally of strategic importance in the transition of power within the university ruling oligarchies. A free avenue for corruption is now open to the union branch executives and their well-wishing members.
ASUU which serves as the vanguard of the university working class in opposition to the Nigerian ruling class whose ultimate interest may be to sell the universities to the highest bidder among themselves in a private and profitable arrangement, cannot afford to be seduced by the university ruling oligarchies or the ruling class itself and risk protecting the means of survival of the university working class or university education for students from poor homes who constitute the majority of Nigerian families. A priori, being a substance of labour, ASUU must challenge on the side of labour the primary contradiction between the labourers and the so-called owners of capital or the primitively accumulated and stolen wealth of the Nigerian people.
Over the years, the leadership of ASUU has grown more reluctant in training, recruiting and building committed change agents and patriots from the local university branches which has translated not only at the level of the National Executive Committee but the time worn insistence of a gerontocratic irreplaceable national leadership. In the past military era, the national leadership invested adequate energy to train cadres at the local level not to abandon this vital task to their artificial tribal zones but to comrades committed to frugal living and practically imbued with the translated principle of socialism, the collective survival and moral commitment of a working class vanguard. The increasing susceptibility and engagement in primitive accumulation in the local branches are the result of the infection of members recruited without a working class programme of training, but chosen by elections, controlled by the corrupting ruling class oligarchies linked to the oppressing Nigerian ruling class. For instance, it weakens the patriotism and working class spirit of ASUU when the ruling class seduces the local branch executives with opportunities and privileges to monitor national, state and local elections, serve as returning officers, enticed with bribes to rig votes or when past INEC Chairman, once executive chairman of ASUU; despite their affinity with the ruling class, still influences decisions that has impact on the relationship of ASUU to the Nigerian government.
With a determination to fight corruption in Nigerian universities and ensure that the invested capital and resources which it had admirably negotiated and secured with the Nigerian government is utilized by the universities to secure a future of self reliance, black power, innovation and independence, ASUU should return to its past for relevant lessons in the training and development of its cadre at the local branches. It is also necessary for it to revisit its relationship with the ruling university oligarchies – a turbulent task because such oligarchies also invest heavily in the election and control of the executive branch members of the universities.
ASUU has not only a historical duty but a moral obligation to guide the resuscitation of the student unions and their umbrella organisation, the National Association of Nigerian Students. Only the organised unions of university workers, with ASUU at its vanguard in tandem with a vigilant independent and organised Association of Nigerian Students Unions under the sovereign leadership of students can guarantee the care and utilization of funds budgeted for the development of Nigerian universities, the internally and externally generated revenues, and prevent its appropriation through the chicaneries of primitive accumulation by the university ruling oligarchies, and the corrupt Nigerian ruling class. With regard to the federal universities, the ruling class prefers to privatise them in their interest or for their maintenance, providing the needed funds with its left hand only to grab it with its right through primitive accumulation. ASUU cannot fall into the deception that the historical enemy of labour, the corrupt Nigerian ruling class, through its formulated government will serve as father Christmas in its negotiations and abandon its own essence and self interest of primitive accumulation.
Without a committed watch, checks and balance by ASUU, other university working unions and NANS, no amount of money, not a hundred trillion dollars, invested for the development of Nigerian universities will satisfy the appetite, desire and greed of the ruling university oligarchies in alliance with the corrupt Nigerian ruling class for privatization of public resources and primitive accumulation, as the future of the nation becomes more chained to western imperialism, neocolonialism and dependence.
•Onwubiko is Professor and Head, Department of Biochemistry, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.