ASUU crisis and the Freudian slip

 Sigmund Freud was the 19th Century Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis famed for his theory of the subconscious. In layman’s construct, one major thesis of Freud’s intellectual enterprise is that the human mind is structured into two parts, namely the conscious and subconscious levels. His theory compares the mind to an iceberg: the conscious part is like the tip of the iceberg that is visible above the water but is only a tiny fraction of the massive expanse of ice hidden beneath the water, and which compares with the subconscious level of the mind. Whereas the conscious level governs premeditation and pretentions in human actions or inactions, utterances and the like, it is the subconscious level that gives reliable insight into underlying factors surrounding any particular situation. In other words, it is the subconscious level of the mind that factually explains, and holds the key to unravelling knotty state of things. A peephole into that subconscious level are the unguarded slips people make, famously referred to as the Freudian slip.

Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige made a Freudian slip last week when he voiced his honest frustration about the protracted crisis hobbling universities as a result of an industrial action by teachers in the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Public universities are currently shuttered owing to a ‘warning’ strike by ASUU, which began 14th February and was billed to last four weeks but has been rolled over for another eight weeks. And principals of the union have given indications of indefiniteness of the strike until government satisfactorily addresses their grouse. ASUU is at daggers drawn with government over a 2009 pact that has been severally renegotiated, with fresh terms agreed upon in 2000 to end a nine-month-long strike undertaken that year by the teachers. ASUU claims that government has failed to match its word with action on the terms agreed upon, including deployment of the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) payroll software in place of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) that the teachers rejected. Government’s counter-narrative has been varied: some times it argued that it had done its level best to meet the teachers’ demands, at other times it argued that the terms were yet to be firmly agreed upon and are subject to renegotiation. While the dispute lasts, universities whose teachers are in ASUU are closed down and students wasting away in idle uncertainty. Ngige last week said he was tired of ASUU members calling strikes rather than employing other pressure tactics whenever they have an axe to grind with government. His Freudian slip, however, was pertaining to his helplessness over the role of other stakeholders central to resolving the labour crisis, especially Education Minister Adamu Adamu who is directly responsible on government’s side for addressing the issues in dispute. 

Speaking at a meeting with members of government’s team on the 2009 Federal Government / University-based Unions’ Agreement Renegotiation Committee, led by Prof. Nimi Briggs, the labour minister lamented the apparent indifference and sheer inaction of his education counterpart. He was reported in a statement by the ministry saying as a conciliator, he had been pushing to see that everything contained in the 2020 memorandum of understanding signed by government and ASUU was done, including implementation of the renegotiated positions. He recalled that renegotiation of the 2009 agreement commenced in 2017 when government raised a panel headed by Wale Babalakin, who was later replaced by Munzali Jibril. The minister said that under the December 2020 pact, he gave government’s side a timeline to return to the university unions, who are their employees, to sort things out. “I started pushing to see that things were done. What the Munzali committee came up with is a proposal. Both Munzali and ASUU did not sign. At our last meeting in February before ASUU proceeded on strike, we said everyone should go back to his principal. I asked the education minister several times what they had done with the document. We later got information on areas of disagreement. There is nothing wrong with that. It is bound to happen. I told ASUU to put up a committee, they said Munzali committee had expired.

“There is high level of indifference to the industrial crisis in universities in critical sectors of government.”

“As a conciliator, I have to make use of the labour instruments at my disposal. The bosses in the Federal Ministry of Education do not feel the strike. There are things that are above me. I am not the Minister of Education. I cannot go to the education minister and dictate to him how to run his place. But I told ASUU that you should be bombarding them at the Federal Ministry of Education for this to be moved forward. There are many ways to do so. If you go to the Labour Act, there is something called picketing. You can picket. A strike is an ultimate thing. Picketing means that you can stay in the corridor, clapping or singing. Workers are permitted to do so. But I am tired that every time there is a disagreement, it is strike. And the bosses in the Federal Ministry of Education don’t feel the strike. It is the children and some of us parents that have our children in public school.”

Ngige’s comments deserves extensive recap here because it illuminates the protracted crisis almost like no other statement from the government’s side has done. He said ASUU members were too hasty in hitting the strike button, which aligns with the argument by many of us all along that they are insensitive to the toll on students. But a more serious challenge is that there is dereliction in government arising from indifference on the part of the education minister and other chieftains of the education ministry. Ngige revealed enough about their disposition by saying they “don’t feel the strike,” and he couldn’t force the hand of his education counterpart because of parity of authority, neither could he teach him how to run his portfolio. The labour minister couldn’t have meant to paint his education counterpart black, hence it was a Freudian slip and an illuminating one at that. And not that his claim was baseless. Besides ASUU, other university-based unions namely the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) and the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) are currently on warning strikes that they have threatened could be made indefinite unless government acts with dispatch on issues in dispute. In its intervention late last week in the industrial crisis, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) recalled that it had in August 2020 written the ministers of education, labour and employment, finance, budget and national planning as well as the federal accountant-general in a bid to avert the present shutdown of the education sector. But only the labour minister, according to NLC, did as much as acknowledged its letter.

So, there is high level of indifference to the industrial crisis in universities in critical sectors of government, especially in the education ministry that is the directly accounting authority. And why is that? Ngige hinted at an answer that is quite notorious: they do not have children in the Nigerian public education system. Higher level officials who could have compelled earnest action by the education minister are apparently in the same comfort zone, namely that their children and wards are in foreign institutions and they have only nominal interest in seeing the Nigerian system work. And there you have it: the apparent reason why the industrial crisis in the varsities isn’t getting swiftly resolved.

It is helpful that the NLC last week gave government a 21-day ultimatum to address the industrial disputes involving university-based unions. If nothing happens, organised labour should take the battle to the doorstep of the education minister to make him do the needful. President Muhammadu Buhari may also need to be called out on his responsibility to hold the minister to account or himself face a legacy of collapsed public tertiary system as his tenure wraps up in about 12 months. Besides, there is need to revisit the bill seeking to bar public officials from sending their children or wards to schools abroad unless under strict terms that was shot down early in March by the House of Representatives. There is more merit to that proposed legislation by Sergius Ogun (PDP, Edo) than the narrow sentiments on which the House members rejected it. Happy Easter.