Why ASUU Strike Lingers – Ochefu, Former Vice Chancellor

• Says Nigeria has room for more universities

By Simeon Ogoegbulem

The former Vice-Chancellor of Kwararafa University, Wukari, Taraba State, and current Secretary of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors, Professor Yakubu Aboki Ochefu, has given an insight into the lingering strike of university lecturers in the public universities in the country. This is even as the renowned academician and university administrator submitted that there is still room for the establishment of more private and public universities in the country.
Ochefu, who spoke exclusively to True Vision, blamed the lingering industrial action to “the lack of creative and critical thinking on the part of the lecturers and government”. He described as unfortunate the fact that “strike over facilities and compensation for workers…have persisted for nearly 40 years in a body of intellectuals and they have not been able to find a solution to the problem”.
The renowned academician pointed out that the ugly situation “goes to show that critical and creative thinking and goodwill on both parts of the workers and their proprietors have not been entrenched”. He regretted that in the last 40 years, the university lecturers have been on strike cumulatively for three years.
Ochefu blamed the government for paying lip service to the issue of education in general and higher education in particular, noting that the lingering strike action by university lecturers has persisted due to inability of those in authority to see “the big picture about the role that education plays in the development of a society”.
“When you contextualize how ruling elites perceive education and the role it plays, it differs from society to society and from historical epoch to historical epoch. He noted that while India on attainment of Independence invested
massively on mass education, Nigerian leaders opted for what he described as “half and half” approach to the issue of education in the country.
His words: “So you have to situate the current ruling class and their own understanding of education in general and public education in particular and higher education in specifics, to begin to understand and appreciate their attitude, impressions and opinions to what is going on in the education sector in the country.
“And if you look at it from the historical trajectory, because again, we pay lip service to history, we do not seem to tie up the loose strings. At independence, the National leadership of this country, asked the question of what the nation needed to do in order to develop rapidly within the context of the First national development plan.
“Do we educate the mass of the population, do we industrialize and if we industrialize, what type of industrialization or do we invest in in agriculture? These questions were debated amongst themselves and the answer they provided was that “we should do half and half”.
According to him, “the ruling elite in India posed the same question in 1948 and debated it for months on what the Congress Party of India should do with their country at independence. Everybody came up with different perspectives. At the end of the conversations, Nehru told them that they can only be three options and that the three options are education, education and education”.
Ochefu recalled that “Nehru submitted that, without educating the mass population of illiterates the party inherited at independence, India will not make any progress. So, India began massive investment in education, cheap low quality mass education.

The university don recalled that it was the massive investment in education by India that led to the origin of barefoot doctors in India, pointing out that it also led to “how the Indian teachers flooded Nigeria for teaching jobs in the 1970s with most of them, teaching science subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology and mathematics and Economics”.
Ochefu was quick to submit that in spite of the lingering strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) that there is still more room for the establishment of universities by government and private individuals or groups in the country. He stated that Nigeria’s higher education index which is used to measure the number of people who seek higher education and access to is less than 10 per cent.
“Our higher education capacity index is less than 10 per cent. The higher education capacity index is an index used to measure the amount of people who seek higher education and to access it. Unfortunately, the figure is less than 10 per cent. When you calculate that index and put it side by side the number of universities that we have, you will see that we do not have enough universities in Nigeria”, he further submitted.
“The population that seek higher education in Nigeria are higher than the spaces available. That is one side of the story. The other side of the story is that the existing universities, can they absorb a greater number of people that they are currently doing? The answer is yes. Can the class sizes be reduced so that the class-teacher ratio can reflect best global best practices, the answer is also yes.
“Herein lies one of the issues, the ASUU has with the government. ASUU is telling government that by your regulatory standards, I am not supposed to teach more than 30 students in a class, but I am now teaching 200. So, it is either you employ four more lecturers to join me so that we can balance out or you pay me for extra work. Government is saying, we cannot pay you for extra work and we are not employing more hands.
“So, somebody needs to sit down and do the mathematics that if I am going to increase the capacity of University of Ibadan to take additional 5,000 students so that at each admission year, Ibadan can take 10,000 students, we need this extra amount of classrooms, academic staff, laboratories and lecturers as well as administrative staff”.
The university Don however regretted that new universities are being established not necessarily according to needs but based on political and emotional sentiments”, adding that only private universities that have shown capacity but lack the student population as a result of the higher fees that they charge.