The true motives of ASUU to begin strike unveiled.

Dr. Kawu Ahidjo Abdulkadiri, a Consultant Spine Surgeon at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, provided a really helpful piece of information on the exact demands of ASUU, which many people seem to be unaware of. See the new facts below:

ASUU asked for and got a special salary structure for themselves called Consolidated University Academic Salary Structure II (CONUASS). This CONUASS was further made up of 3 components: A) CONUASS I [the previous one from 2007], B) Consolidated Peculiar University Academic Allowances [CONPUAA], and C) Rent.

The CONPUAA was apparently designed to capture all the other allowances that they wanted but not captured in the CONUASS. The reason why they were allowed this was because the committee agreed that

In exchange for this new pay, ASUU agreed to be of good behaviour and not do anything that disrupts the academic calendar to get whatever it wants, i.e. no striking.

Next thing they did was to look at the countries where Nigerian academics frequently migrated to e.g. Botswana, Ghana and other developed countries. Based on this, they came up with a salary structure that would prevent this kind of brain drain. They called this Table 1 in the agreement.

It is the next bit that seems to have caused all the problems and it’s easy to see why. Something called Earned Academic Allowances was also agreed to by both parties. In essence, this was supposed to be a kind of piece-rate payment where ASUU members as academic staff were paid a fixed amount for each unit of work they did. So for supervising postgraduate students, a Professor was to be paid N25,000 per student while a Lecturer 1 and Senior Lecturer were to be paid N15,000 and N20,000 per student respectively.

For Teaching Practice/Industrial Supervision/Field Trips, a Professor was entitled to N100,000 per annum. Further, if a Professor did more than one field trip in a year, he would be paid separately for each one. Even though this money was for field trips, such an academic staff would be entitled to mileage and overnight allowance in line with government regulations. It’s unclear why, after being paid N100,000 for a field trip, the same person will then be entitled to mileage and overnight allowance. And what is ‘field trip’?

There was also honoraria for helping to conduct exams internally or externally ranging from N45,000 for master’s degree to N105,000 for doctorates. For moderating external undergraduate or postgraduate exams, there was a separate honoraria ranging from N60,000 for 50 undergraduate students to N80,000 for more than 10 postgraduate students.

To encourage young academics to ‘further,’ their studies, postgraduate study grants were to be given – N350,000 per session (up to a maximum of 2 sessions) for a science based masters and N500,000 per session (up to a maximum of 4 sessions) for a science-based doctorate. The figures were N250,000 and N350,000 respectively for non-science studies.

Another N200,000 was to be paid to external assessors for the position of Reader and Professor. Call duty and clinical hazard allowances were to be paid to those who qualify per existing government regulations.

It is unclear what a Responsibility Allowance is (at least to me) but a Vice Chancellor and Librarian were entitled to N750,000 per annum for this allowance while “all other officers” were entitled to N150,000.

Excess Workload Allowance was to be paid per hour to teaching staff ranging from N2,000 per hour for a Graduate Assistant to N3,500 per hour for a Professor.

The problem with these allowances is that there is no way for the government to know how much they will cost in advance. They could cost N10bn or they could cost N100bn. Lecturers would simply submit the bills and the government would have to cough up the money.

There were other non-salary benefits in the agreement as well. Each academic staff was entitled to a car loan equivalent to his/her annual salary charged at 2% for administrative cost (stop laughing). They were also entitled to a car refurbishment loan for those who wanted to refurbish their old cars, again charged at 2%. At least with a car loan you get to see the new car if you want to, but refurbishment? That’s just money in the bush.

For housing loans, each academic was entitled to 8 times his/her annual salary to buy a house. After 6 years’ service, an academic would be entitled to a sabbatical leave. If this sabbatical was abroad, the university would pay the “transport” costs for the academic, his or her spouse, and up to 4 children. If hospitalised, an academic would be entitled to 6 months’ paid sick leave, which could be extended for another 6 months. 

Source: Legit.ng