By Chuks OLUIGBO
In this interview, Prof Ukachukwu Awuzie, firebrand academic and National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, bares his mind on many contentious issues affecting Nigeria: the 2011 general elections, the NYSC debate, the Jonathan presidency, tertiary education in Nigeria, the future of the Nigerian youth, among others. Below are excerpts:
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| Prof Awuzie |
Let’s begin with the just concluded 2011 general elections in Nigeria. So far, many have acclaimed it as the freest and fairest in Nigeria’s history; many have said it was properly done; some have even called it a revolution; even international observers have said yes, for once Nigeria has got it right. But also in certain quarters there are still people who are saying that it was a fraud. For instance, the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, is accusing the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, of massive rigging in the South-East and the South-South. Now as a stakeholder in the Nigerian project, a senior citizen, an elder, and an observer of these elections, how would you rate the elections?
Well, the observers have a right to air their views, having come down here. But what they observed were the things happening at the polling booths and maybe few collation centres. Viewed from the perspective of organisation of the electoral process, Jega did well with his commission, but the Nigerian politician has not changed one bit. You know, you can have free and fair election for the same group of thieves, those who were there, you now do free and fair election and they find their way back. Even those who won in the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, in the South-West were those who left the PDP. So, it’s the same group of people. Nothing has really changed. We have had elections, we have voted, but talking about whether this process will bring a change, the answer is no, because nothing has changed. As for whether there was rigging or not, there was rigging. If we want to have an election that will represent the will of the people, we must know how to address money politics. The way money moved in the just concluded elections is unprecedented in Nigeria’s history. New methods were involved, voters cards were bought, whether in the North or in the East or in the West, there were multitudes of malpractices. If you want to go by empirical knowledge, there has never been an election where you score 98 percent. In Imo State, we scored 98 percent at the presidential election but we couldn’t score 70 percent at the governorship election. The total votes cast at the governorship election in Imo was less that 900,000; the presidential election was about 1.3 million. The governorship election had everybody involved and was heavily contested compared to the presidential. But maybe Imo people love Jonathan more than they love the state. Also in the North, there was rigging. Evidences from the people show that some people were molested. The thumb-printing and the under-aged voters, these things were not within the purview of international observers. So, we must tell ourselves the home truth. When we tell ourselves the truth, then we begin a proper diagnosis. As for the level of logistics in conducting the elections, Jega did his best. Are we saying that we didn’t know there was ballot box snatching and stuffing? Didn’t they go to Oguta and find that some people were already thumb-printing before the elections were to start? There was also misconduct by some INEC officials who collaborated with some governments in power to rig for them. I think we need a surgery of the whole process. First, how money is spent in elections. The information we have, we are still trying to investigate them and substantiate them, but I know that even in my own small community, I saw one thousand naira being given to people on the eve of the governorship election. And you begin to ask, what is it all about? The revolution we can accept for now is that in most cases people collected the money and still voted according to their conscience. And that is where we, including the media, if they want to live up to their bidding, should join the civil societies and those who are patriotic to further enlighten the people so that we get to a stage where people will vote based on performance and not money. If they bring the money, you take it and vote according to your conscience if you can’t resist it. After all, there was a case during the CPC primaries in Kano where a woman was given N35,000 to vote and the woman started crying. When asked why she was crying, she said that she had never seen that amount of money all her life. So, we must get to that level of checkmating these things. We also found out that in many cases the police force failed to perform. Whether the international observers said it was fantastic or not, the police force compromised themselves in many places. That’s why people are suggesting that we should begin to look at the process of appointing the Inspector General of Police, IG. What is happening in this country is that those who appointed you, you want to show gratitude to them for appointing you. That is why some people talk nonsense even when they know the truth. So, the police was compromised to some extent. We also saw that where INEC was supposed to be provided with logistics, cars were bought for the police and none provided for INEC. We saw situations where party stalwarts were volunteering to use their car to carry ballot papers and ballot materials to the centres when these things should have been done by INEC. We even found situations where policemen were not on ground. At the beginning we were told that there would be four policemen in every polling booth, but it didn’t happen in many places. And there was money voted for it. This was part of the corruption and fraud that characterised the last election. So, on the surface, there has been an improvement on what we used to have, but I think that we have to return ultimately, for us in the labour movement, we believe we have to have the workers’ party, that’s when we will begin to talk about liberation. At that level, you know who earns what and you can checkmate him, you can know when he begins to over-enrich himself. That is one. Two, this multiplicity of parties is useless. I think and hope that Jega and his commission should look at it. Those who couldn’t win one vote should be out. This idea of ‘we are pledging support for this or that man’ is nonsense. You hadn’t one candidate in the whole election and you are pledging support. Who are you carrying? Yourself and your wife? Those who couldn’t deliver one ward, who couldn’t win even one House of Assembly seat in the whole federation, they should be scrapped. Let them go and join other parties because they are costing us materials. We print ballot papers with 200 names, those who have no serious intension of campaigning, who have no programmes, no budget. When we had the two-party system, we made progress but as it is now, we are almost gradually returning to regional politics, which is dangerous. If we had two parties, we would compel ourselves to join either of them, but right now ACN has taken over the South-West; we’re returning to Action Group. It is unfortunate that Peter Obi performed poorly in Anambra, otherwise we would now be talking about APGA for the South-East. Even ANPP that people thought was dead was able to grab some states in the North. So, gradually, we see regionalism returning. The sooner we go back to the two-party state the better for us, otherwise we are going to have problem in this country. We think we are going forward but we might find that we are going backwards, we’ll end up having regional parties and regional politics, and it will be very dangerous for Nigeria. It will be taking us back to pre-Independence.
Huge billions of naira was invested in the just concluded electoral process. Now when you look at the amount spent vis-a-vis the outcome of the election, is the expenditure justifiable?
Some of the expenses were unnecessary, but it wasn’t Jega’s fault. When Jega made a proposal to the National Assembly, he said, if we do direct purchase we will spend N34 billion, but if we use contractors we will spend N57 billion. The government said, use contractors because it is in line with Public Procurement Act. We spent additional N20 billion because we wanted to use Public Procurement Act. Are you going to count that as money spent on the election? We were prepared to spend that money because some of those who are going to get that contract are our men. At the end of the day all these people were running to China to purchase these machines because none of them is being produced here. They are being produced elsewhere. And those who produced these things said, let us supply you directly, they said no, we will use Public Procurement Act. We have used it, and that’s an additional cost. So, some of the costs incurred for the elections were avoidable costs. Some arose due to shortness of time. Jega stepped in shortly before the elections, and so there was fire brigade approach. Some of the things he would have taken time to study and look at other options, he couldn’t do them. He had to rush so as to complete the elections within target time. Four years is there for them to plan another election. So, Jega and INEC should now begin the processes, look at where they went wrong and where they went right. The National Assembly must also do its own bit. They went in and said that we would do electronic voting, biometrics, but we now had to go and produce photographs of every person who is going to vote so that we can do manual accreditation rather than taking your card there and slotting it into the machine and if it’s not you, if it is not your thumb-print, it will reject you. But we said no, the National Assembly has said no electronic voting. You see, our country cannot be going backwards. Let us use the next four years to enlighten our people. Even with the manual voting, you still see a lot of the ballot papers were voided because of lack of education. The people don’t know. So, we must spend time on public enlightenment. We must educate our people because many of them are illiterate. They hardly go to school. We must provide them with educational facilities. When we have done all these, we can then begin to rely on the electronic voting. And some people rig these elections because of these illiterates. They say, let me show you how to vote, and they tell them where to put their hands.
When Obama came to Ghana in 2009, he made a comment about Africa needing strong institutions instead of strong men, and ever since it has been an issue. Even when Jega was appointed, some people argued that it wasn’t about one strong man but about the institution itself. Now the elections have come and gone and Jega, no doubt, has proved that one man can make a difference. Yet, INEC doesn’t seem to have improved. What can be done now to make INEC a stronger institution?
One, when the tenure of some of the serving electoral commissioners elapse, they must be subjected to public scrutiny, not Senate scrutiny. Before Jega appeared before the Senate, the people had already passed a vote of confidence in him. Can we say the same of all the electoral commissioners? These were people who were picked by the governors, hoping that they would play the ball for them. There used to be a common saying among the INEC commissioners, ‘we make governors’. Ok, so you see, they make governors, not we the electorate, because they know what they do. Many of the governors make sure that the day you arrive they court you and begin to provide all your needs so that when the time comes you will play along, otherwise how can in Imo State the original copy of the result be found in the hands of politicians who write the figures in their homes and bring to the collation centres? So, first and foremost, Jega must embark on a very serious restructuring of INEC. He has four years to do that. Two, we must review the appointment procedure of INEC commissioners. They must be subjected to public scrutiny, not by the National Assembly. When people are condemned, they should go. They should not be left to the so-called governors to appoint. No, they will file in their cronies who will go there and feel indebted to them. Look at what the Uwais report said, we must go by that. If we go by that, we will get credible people because people will write in from all parts of the world and make their nominations. At the end of the day they will collate the nominations and get the people who have the highest nominations, then go over and check their records, the details of who they were. If you leave it to the governors, they will nominate their men, as it is happening now with the appointment of ministers. Now they are fighting themselves over who becomes minister. In Oyo State, Akala has lost and now he says, I’m still the sitting governor, I’ll nominate. The party stalwarts say no, you can’t nominate; we’ll nominate. And there’s a battle. That is what has been happening with the INEC commissioners. The governor looks at someone he likes and sends him there. When he gets there, especially since the PDP has an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly, he will sail through once he’s from a PDP governor. Sometimes they’ll just ask him few questions and pass him. So, you now get a bunch of people who are not committed. There are people who are committed also, some of the INEC commissioners appointed lately who are men of honour who are working with Jega, no doubt about that. But there are also many rotten eggs who were products of political patronage who are still there and answering commissioners, and who clearly were not working in tandem with the philosophy of Jega to deliver credible elections. They believe in ‘business as usual’ because many of them had also done budget of what they were going to do after the elections and how much they were going to make from the politicians, but Jega came to be a sore throat. They were not happy and so were working at cross purposes with him.
Following the post-election violence in parts of the North and the massacre of innocent corps members, there has been a heated debate about the future of the National Youth Service scheme. Many have said, scrap it outright while others are saying, restructure it and let it live. What’s your take on this?That is what I call missionary approach. There’s a problem with a child and instead of solving the problem you say kill the child. That is wrong. Have we met the driving goals for the establishment of the NYSC? That should be the first question. Yes there are problems arising from the idiosyncrasies of individuals. Must we not look for a way of checking them? Is it not soluble? Is the answer just scrapping it? Will it stop violence? The people Boko Haram has been killing, is it as a result of NYSC? In Bornu, Boko Haram has been killing policemen, so we scrap the police force? I don’t think that is the answer. The answer is that we have to find a way of guaranteeing the security of our people, not only the corps members, the security of every Nigerian. That is one of the greatest problems facing this country: how do you guarantee personal security? How many people were killed before the elections? Look at the ACN governorship candidate of Benue State, how many times have they made attempts on his life? These victims of political assassination, are they corps members? Should we now say because of these killings people should not come out to contest elections for fear they might be killed? Should we stop politics and not hold elections because people have been killed pre, during and after? So, what we are saying is that every Nigerian deserves security, be you a corps member, a trader, a worker. And if Nigeria is truly our country, then you must be secure wherever you find yourself in this country, and it is the responsibility of Jonathan to find solution to it, to address the issue of security in this country. When you talk about these corps members, are there not federal civil servants scattered all over Nigeria? Those from the South posted to the North, to Sokoto and Maiduguri? Must we say that nobody should be posted out of his state? These corps members, yes we are worried because they are youths, the future of this nation, that’s why we are worried. But no life deserves to be lost to these reckless violence that people organise, no matter what form it takes. So, we shouldn’t be talking about scrapping the NYSC. Our solution to the Nigerian problem should be comprehensive, not missionary.
During the elections, in spite of people’s hatred for the PDP, they still voted for Jonathan, and people were clear about it: it is not PDP we’re voting for, it’s Jonathan. Now that Jonathan has emerged, what would Nigerians expect of him in the next four years?
I don’t know what Nigerians expect. As for me, I don’t have any expectations. I don’t think anything will change. I don’t expect any change because Jonathan has been part of the system. We said there was no zoning, and now we are zoning offices, the same PDP that abandoned zoning. Why don’t we continue with competence? We now want to circumscribe and invoke the issue of fourth-ranking so that David Mark will remain the Senate President. When they came in 1999, what were their ranks? How did they learn? From the trees, or were they taught from their mothers’ wombs? Mark who was a military man became a democrat and headed the Senate and made laws for us from a military background. Did he go for any orientation to demilitarise him mentally and otherwise before he could be there? Now nobody could be there unless you have been there before. Nothing has changed; it is still the same people making laws that suit them. So, I have no expectations, except that I want to be surprised. If this government addresses corruption, I will be surprised. I will be surprised if education is better funded. I want to be surprised that third generation universities have moved to their permanent sites. All the third generation universities owned by the federal government, none has moved to a permanent site. Why can’t you move them to their permanent site and equip them properly? I want to be surprised that we have become lawful instead of being lawless, because how can you create universities without an enabling law and appoint Vice-Chancellors to them? I want to be surprised that this government can give us power because we have been told since 1999 by this same PDP government that they will give us power, and we’ve never had it. I want to be surprised that the security of every Nigerian can be guaranteed under this government. Let them surprise me. I’m not hoping because if I hope on something that I know will not be done, then I might develop stroke. I want to be surprised when they do it, then I will rejoice.
Now let’s come to your direct constituency, education. At a point last year, all the state-owned universities in the South-East were under lock and key for over six months. And today, there are people who are asking: why must ASUU go on strike at every little provocation? Now let’s face it, what are the key issues that if they are addressed now, there will be no more strike?
Fund the universities well, and there will be no strikes. Funding the university is not just giving me salary; it is that you should come to my office as a professor and I should have light in it and be able to sit here and consult with my students; that you go to the laboratory and there will be chemicals to do tests; that the students of this university should have light at night to study in their classrooms; that they should have conducive university teaching and learning environment; that the agreements we reached, which were meticulously gone through, be implemented; that we don’t sign an agreement just for the sake of signing it, like saying, let us calm them down so that they can go, after that we continue life as usual. If they want to stop strikes, let them be honest. In 2009 they told us that they allotted 13 percent of the budget to education, that from there it will move progressively to 26 percent in 2020, and in 2010 they allocated 6 percent. Is that how to make progress? Are we going to get to 26 from the back? They do these things and they think they are buying time. I want to teach and be proud of my products. In our days at Nsukka, Ikenna Nzimiro would tell us: if we give you first class you will be able to defend it anywhere in the world. I didn’t make a first class, I made a 2:1 and when I went to America I was the first in my class to finish. I was proud of what I got here. But can we say the same of our children today? Should it be getting better or worse? If they do the right things, there will be no strikes. But to keep deceiving our children that we are teaching them when we are doing no teaching, it’s unfair. You want distilled water and you wait for the air conditioner to drop water, then you collect the water with a cup or a bucket and it becomes distilled water that you will use in the laboratory. That is deceit. To give someone first class and he goes out there and he cannot defend it, is that what you want to do? If your certificate cannot empower you with self-confidence and make you talk proudly about your profession, then what we have done here for four years is deceit; 419, and those who facilitate it and participate in it have committed a criminal offence against the people of Nigeria. You know that you have not funded the existing universities, you come in and say overnight that you are creating 9 universities. If you followed their trajectory, first they said that they had created 6 universities, Alvan Ikoku College of Education Owerri was included, Yaba Tech was there, Kaduna Polytechnic, Adeyemi College of Education, Katsina College of Education, they said they had elevated them to universities. After some months, that one died, no one talked about them again. The next one was that they were creating two universities, one in Bayelsa for the president, another in Jigawa for the Minister of Education. And then when politics was hotting up and they needed to win more votes, they said that all the states that had no university will now get one, that it was in keeping with the principle of justice, so said Mr President at the PDP rally. And I’m quick to remind him that justice so demands that there are states today that do not have federal colleges of education and federal polytechnics. He should give them one each, in the name of justice and equity. See, we cannot talk about education and play politics with it. That’s the problem we have in the education sector. Those who are supposed to manage it are playing politics with it. I don’t think I or any academic staff took up teaching appointment because he wants to go on strike. Let me tell you some of the causes of the recent provocations. A governor gets up and removes a VC overnight, no reason, no fair trial, no due process. A politician removes a professor, you know what it takes to be a professor in a university? You can be a politician today and become a governor next week. If you are loaded you can always buy some people and they will make you governor. But you cannot become a professor overnight.
Let’s go back to the closure of the universities in the South-East. The debates lasted for a while, and the deliberations too, and then suddenly ASUU went back to work. Now the issues that were raised then, have they been resolved? Have the demands of ASUU been met?
Now let’s take Imo State University as an example. When they met, they said they have agreed. They called the so-called stakeholders and brought together all these spent forces in Imo State. They gathered and agreed on the things they were going to do. One of these was that they were going to pass a bill in the House whereby the local governments will contribute 5 percent of the budget for running tertiary education since the state cannot run it alone. Up till now, that bill has not been passed, not to talk about implementation. They went ahead and increased school fees, the children rebelled against it. When someone came for political campaign and said he will give free education and reduce school fees, they turned to say that school fees were never increased. Even some who are in authority in this university, they went about singing that they never increased school fees, but some people paid. Yes, we don’t want our children to remain at home, but what has improved? Is it that we now have light here? Is it that we have the compound looking like a university? Is it that we have increased the sitting capacity of the lecture halls? They think that once you get your salary, you have achieved all you want to do. During admission, NUC says take this number, but everybody in the government house sends a list and say you must approve all their lists. It’s like a racket. And the autonomy of the university is being violated by all these people who call themselves executive governors and their cronies. So, nothing has changed. If you pay salary, that is not what makes a university get high ranking. It is the quality of staff, quality of students, and the environment. When you come to IMSU, you don’t get the tickling of being in the university, that ambience is not there. They are not interested in funding the university. All they are interested in is who becomes the VC, whether he is from their zone, and they create instability in the process.
While we are complaining that the standard of education continues to go down at an alarming rate, the federal government through its ministry of education is busy approving private universities, many of which operate below standard and have to borrow lecturers from wherever they are available because they have no lecturers of their own. What should be done about this?
The Nigerian people should speak out and tell the FG that what it is doing is wrong. This is not a PDP or ACN or CPC matter. They are toying with the future of our children. Nigerians should speak out because a society gets what it deserves. If you keep quiet and believe that these politicians will do the right thing, they will end up wasting our time. And when ASUU says this thing is wrong, they say we are making noise, that we are always causing trouble. So, let Nigerians who believe that these things are not right tell the government.
Bad governance, bad politics, bad leadership, bad education. In all these things, the youths of this nation bear the brunt. When they rise to protest, they are crushed. What would you want the youths to do if they want to take their destiny in their hands?
My greatest worry is the way NANS was penetrated and destroyed. Today, whenever there is a NANS election, you will hear booming of guns. That is the greatest disaster. In our days in the university, most of these fights that ASUU is fighting today, we fought them. ‘Ali must go’ was in our time. We fought the battle of the university, not the lecturers, but because NANS has been destroyed, they can’t. NANS should be the rallying point, the anchor for the youths of this country. But when you hear that the youths of this country are being used as thugs, it is heartbreaking. I have had the occasion to tell my students, on the day of elections you will hear that governor A has voted, and they beam camera on him and his wife. If you go and vote nobody will know, and you will be busy looking for how to carry ballot box for him. None of his children will be there. When you finish they will say you are a very strong man. What happens after that? They will send their children abroad. When you go to the government house four times, the fifth time they will say don’t bring him in, the governor can’t see him, and they lay you off. So, the youths of this nation must first of all organise themselves, and we are ready to partner with them as ASUU in the process of salvaging this country. They should not continue to accept that they are the future leaders. When will the future come when we are still recycling the old people. How can you bring a retired VC who has served his tenure and call him VC of a new university? They said they did well. All the ones that are remaining, are they idiots that can’t do well? If you want to bring those who did well and recycle them, go and bring back Prof Ade Ajayi, go and look for S.O. Biobaku, Tekena Tamuno, they are all alive and they did well during their own time, if you don’t believe that these ones can be challenged to do well. We also call on the government to give these youths a chance, not as thugs but in the process of policy formulation because these are the potent forces we have. We must maximise them. We must not allow them to waste their energy because of our poor planning, corruption and selfishness. The youths must begin to gather and begin to live above these sentiments of tribe or clan or religion or zone. They must come together to wrestle Nigeria from this dying and passing generation that has mortgaged their future badly.
