With members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities [ASUU] threatening to embark on another round of nationwide, total and indefinite strike action, what Minister of Education Dr. Tunji Alausa said on Thursday threatens to take us back to January 1993, when a similar stance by the Federal Government led to a strike that lasted nearly nine months.
The Minister said at a press conference that contrary to ASUU’s claim that the government has never implemented any of the agreements that it signed with the union, there is actually no agreement between the Federal Government and ASUU.
He said that contrary to the impression given to Nigerians, the government had never signed any binding agreement with ASUU and that the documents ASUU is claiming to be agreements were just drafts that were tabled for discussion.
Which reminds me. That as an Assistant Editor of the defunct Citizen magazine in the early 1990s, I reported on the FG-ASUU tango for two years. In late 1992, after an ASUU strike that lasted many months, the Babangida military regime signed an agreement with ASUU that included a hefty salary increase and major concessions on university autonomy and financing. Five government ministers and three other agency heads signed the agreement on behalf of the government, as did ASUU leaders then led by its President, Dr. Attahiru Jega. Babangida publicly endorsed the agreement, and the government actually started implementing it.
But then, in January 1993, when Babangida inaugurated the Transitional Council headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, its Secretary for Education, Prof Ben Nwabueze, publicly repudiated the agreement. He said it was “valid but not binding” because the government could not surrender its sovereign power to spend money through an agreement with a section of its citizens. ASUU countered, that five ministers signed the agreement, Babangida endorsed it and government actually started implementing it, so the legal principle of estoppel applied; implementation is proof that there was indeed a binding agreement.
ASUU is now saying there were agreements signed and the minister is saying those were drafts, not agreements. After 32 years, we are exactly back to where we were in January 1993. God help Nigerian students and their parents.
