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Assessment of Effect of ASUU Industrial Conflict On Academic Infrastructure
Chapter One
Introduction
1.1 Background to the Study
Academic infrastructures are essential
for the provision of standard education. They are material resources that
enhance teaching and learning thereby making the process of acquiring education
meaningful and purposeful. In Nigerian universities, to harness and utilize
these infrastructures often require drawing the attention of the Nigerian
government to this necessity through industrial conflicts, negotiations, and
strikes by organized union. Industrial conflict has been observed to be in
existence in all human organizations and the university being a centre of
learning, with diverse needs is not an exception. In every organization where
employees and employers of different backgrounds and interest in a collective
effort towards achieving a set goal, conflict is bound to occur. Ahmed, (2014)
opined that workers throughout the world are alike in the sense that they
desire recognition; satisfaction; fair wages and salaries; job securities;
redress of wrongs and good working conditions, but often time, the employer and
the union representing workers find themselves in sharp disagreement. Such
frictions or disagreement give rise to industrial disputes and strikes. In
the1970s, labour unions became vibrant and active in the Nigerian University
system due to the massive expansion of educational institutions during the
period and the need for the staff to effectively run their increased academic
and administrative responsibilities (Jega in Samuel 2018). These staff needed
secured tenure, improved conditions of service and protection against
employer‟s arbitrariness and overzealousness. The Academic Staff Union of
Universities (ASUU) emerged in 1978 and succeeded the Nigerian Association of
University Teachers (NAUT) which was earlier formed in 1965, to provide the
platform for an effective articulation of grievances, the protection and
defence of basic rights as well as the promotion of University common
objectives, needs and aspiration of its members. ASUU was formed at the
beginning of the decline in oil boom and funding of universities grew poorer
and as a result, ASUU‟s orientation became radical and more concerned with
broad national issues. ASUU as stakeholders in university education are
interested in improving working conditions of their members and in regulating a
wide range of other issues that directly or indirectly affect their members‟
job and working lives by ensuring that certain standards and rules are set with
respect to their internal structure and their external relationships with
employers and government through collective bargaining which involves joint
meetings and deliberations by both the union and the employer. It is on records
that the 1980s saw Nigerian universities as examples of excellence in academia
and a pillar on which the nation‟s developmental hope rested. However, contrary
to the high expectations of the founding fathers whose vision and dream were to
see that Nigerian men and women were equipped with university degrees
equivalent to what obtained in Western countries, Nigerian universities have
been plagued with conflicts. The past three decades in the history of Nigerian
University system have been crisis- ridden with persistent industrial strikes
between ASUU and the FGN arising from underfunding of the system, poor wages
and conditions of service of academic staff as well as lack of university
autonomy and academic freedom among others. But in recent years, the focus has
shifted to the development of academic infrastructures in the universities.
Academic infrastructures include but not limited to classroom/ lecture
theatres, equipped and functional laboratories, furnished staff offices and
residential accommodation, information communication technology and other
related services. Other facilities include regular power and water supply, good
road network and drainage, health facilities as well as consumables (Ahmed,
2012).
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