Condemns
NANS for opposing a nationwide strike against Education Underfunding
PRESS STATEMENT
The
Education Rights Campaign (ERC) wishes to reiterate her principled support for
the ongoing strike of ASUU and ASUP. We believe this strike which is about
compelling government to fulfill its social responsibility in terms of funding
public education and improving the conditions of education workers deserve the principled
support of students, parents and the labour movement as a whole.
To
this extent, we condemn the position taken by the leadership of the National
Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) towards the strike which consists of
issuing ultimatum to ASUU to call off the strike without any regard for the
crucial issues of education funding which the strike was called to address. Now
with the recent visit of NANS to President Buhari at which a big birthday card
was presented by NANS to president Buhari, it is clear that all of NANS
recriminations about this strike has nothing to do with protecting the
interests of Nigerian students who are suffering at home due to the strike but
actually dictated by the interests of the hungry locusts in the leadership of
NANS to get close to the corridors of power in exchange for money.
As
we in the ERC have labored to explain, the best way to protect the interest of
students and ensure this strike comes to an end as soon as possible is for the
students' movement to rally behind the strike in order to mount pressure on the
Federal government to meet the demands of ASUU and ASUP. Any other method is
opportunistic and a tongue-in-cheek endorsement of the anti-education and
anti-student policies of underfunding and fee hike being implemented by the
President Buhari APC government.
ERC
members have campaigned over the last decade for adequate funding of the
education sector, on the basis that quality education is crucial to economic
growth and national security. Regrettably, this dogged issue of funding has
remained the bane of strike actions in tertiary institutions since 2009.
The
agreements the federal government willingly entered with the unions were
foregrounded by a NEEDS assessment report, a report that was conducted, sanctioned
and adopted by the federal government. The pictures from the NEEDS assessment report,
of the overcrowded lecture rooms and unequipped laboratories, have worsened
today. Instructions, in the sciences and medical sciences, ought to be
demonstrated; but today, science and medical courses are largely taught
abstractly. The ERC therefore believes that the material conditions that
justified the several agreements with the unions are not only existing, but
have worsened.
We
are witnesses to the fee hikes that rocked tertiary institutions in the first
half of 2018. Fee hikes are convenient for school authorities to augment
inadequate funding, and grossly unfair to parents and guardians that a
recession had pushed closer to poverty. Underfunding of education hold students
and parents as victims as much as education workers. We therefore find the
position of NANS on the present strike unfortunate and self-annihilating,
because NANS's position failed to recognise the interest of students for
comfortable hostels and quality education in the struggle of the education
workers.
When
students were protesting fee increment in UNIBEN and UI last year, NANS lost
her voice and only just discovered her voice of scurrilities over ASUU and ASUP
struggles. That smacks of opportunism! The ERC holds the opinion that NANS is
existing in the firmament, and cut off from the realities obtainable on
campuses, and therefore incapable of leading advocacy in the interests of
Nigerian students. Just to prove this point further: at the press conference
where NANS cast aspersion on the demands of ASUU and ASUP, it also seized the
moment to endorse President Muhammadu Buhari, despite the intangible
contribution of the latter to the education sector.
Meanwhile,
the Buhari-led federal government keeps drawing the same conclusions
independently as the striking unions about the crisis in the education sector.
But it keeps stopping short of funding the sector, even when it agrees that the
conditions creating demand for funding are there. We note the revelations of
ASUU concerning the Wale Babalakin committee, which was set up by the
government to renegotiate the terms of the agreements that previous governments
had entered with ASUU. ASUU is demanding for the removal of Wale
Babalakin as the chairman of the committee, because he is fixated on fee hike
and education loans, according to the ASUU leadership. The ERC believes that
the federal government has demonstrated obvious insincerity on the central
question of education funding that created the perennial strikes, and evades
that question through nebulous means.
We
believe that the government has the wherewithal to fund education, even beyond
the current demands of the education sector unions for a one-off funding
intervention in the sector. Less than 11, 800 political appointees are fleecing
this country, through their outrageous remuneration and inflated cost of
contracts or outsourcing of government's projects. The same government rushes
to bail out a bank that was plundered by her chief executive, to save the money
of a few stinkingly rich people who own more than 50% of the deposits in
Nigerian banks.
The
ERC holds that the capitalist system that this country runs is responsible for
most of government's misplaced priorities that deflect from funding sectors
important to vast majority of the people, in order to save funds for looting. This
is why the struggle against education underfunding and improvement in workers
welfare can only win permanent victory when linked with the general struggle of
the working class to put an end to capitalism and enthrone a workers and poor
people’s government armed with socialist policies.
Signed
Hassan Taiwo Soweto Wole Olubanji
National Coordinator. National Mobilization
Officer
