Professor Adelaja Odukoya is the Dean of Faculty of Social Science at the University of Lagos, Akoka. He is also the Lagos zone coordinator of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). He speaks in this interview by TUNBOSUN OGUNDARE on a range of issues, including the alleged move by the Federal Government to commercialise public universities.
You have been in the public university system for over two decades, how would you explain the financial conditions of most students?
Students mostly do not have independent sources of finance. They are naturally dependent. With over 70 percent of Nigerians experiencing multi-dimensional poverty, it is safe to say most students in public universities are from poor homes and the last eight years have seen to the worsening of the poverty of their parents. It is against this background that the recent hike in school fees, despite the bogus free-tuition deception, is unconscionable, wicked, insensitive and inhuman.
But let’s put the blame where it is, at the doorsteps of the government that has, in the most irresponsible manner, distanced itself from funding education. Now the government is indirectly setting the administrators of our tertiary institutions against their students.
With the cost of everything hitting the skies and the government refusing to fund these institutions, the government is now asking the universities to feast on their students whose parents are suffering the effects of the government’s planlessness and uncritical embrace of the ruinous neo-liberal poisonous policies of the IMF and the World Bank
Are you saying the children of the rich, including political leaders, are no longer attending Nigeria’s public universities?
That is exactly how it is. The rich and the political leaders don’t send their children to public schools again in Nigeria like in the olden days. Not only do they no longer sending their kids to public universities, they also don’t send them to public primary and secondary schools. It was in the past that there was the middle class. There is no more middle class in Nigeria. It is either you are at the top or you are at the bottom of the ladder and the gap between the two groups is widening every day.
The rich only manage to send their children to private primary and secondary schools where they pay millions of Naira per term. Once they are through, they send them abroad for university education. Public schools are no longer attractive. That is the situation today. At the end of their programmes abroad, they bring those among their kids who are willing back to the country to take over from them and continue to live on our common wealth. Then, they continue to oppress the poor in the name of generational takeover. That is the reality today.
How can this cycle be broken?
By the poor realising that they are the ones the rich are using to perpetrate their dominance and oppression. We can see how some people are calling for Biafra Republic, Oodua Republic, Muslim-Muslim ticket, Muslim-Christian ticket and all that as if that is the way things will get better. And this is because their consciousness has been zeroed down to that level of thinking. What they are fighting for is religious or ethnic justice rather than social justice.
Until the people begin to fight against oppression and change the status quo, things may continue to get worse. Oppressors have no tribe, they have no religion. They don’t even have brothers or sisters, because the oppressor can be one’s pastor, imam, kinsman, brother or sister.
That is why you see the oppressed busy fighting themselves and allow the oppressors to continue to oppress them rather than fight for social justice together.
That is our situation in Nigeria and it is very unfortunate. But I want to believe that people like us who want social justice for the citizens will continue to enlighten the fellow oppressed to wake up and fight for the right cause – the cause of the poor – and change the narrative for the betterment of all and not a few, as it has been all along.
What do you think about the student loan scheme and fees hike in federal universities?
As I said earlier, the government is not sincere about the scheme. They are being deceptive. They are playing politics with everything and we can’t move forward as a country in that way. Firstly, as far as Nigeria is concerned and based on the law establishing federal universities, a university needs to get clearance from the National Universities Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education to review school fees. It is not what each university can do on its own. The Federal Government is aware of this constitutional provision but they are speaking from both sides of the mouth. The government knows that things are tough for most Nigerians and are tougher on campuses.
So, those who don’t know should know now that the Federal Government is behind the scenes of fees increment in our universities. It is the one indirectly setting universities against their students. And this move is the first layer, since the government is claiming that its universities are tuition-free. The second layer is coming and that is when tuition fees will be introduced properly and the government will just tell any student who cannot meet up with payment to come and take loans that will put them in debt and indirectly endanger their lives. We have heard that students committed suicide in Europe and America just because of inability to pay back their loans. We don’t need to wait to experience the same things here before we do the right things.
What are the right things, because government has repeatedly claimed there is no money?
That claim of no money is not true. If there is no money, those political officeholders, from the presidency to the National Assembly down to the states and local governments should first reduce their bogus allowances, say, by 50 per cent. Let them do that as sacrifice and channel the money into fixing some of the problems in the critical sectors of the economy such as education and health.
So, our problem is not lack of resources to fund the system well, but the greed of our political leaders. They just want to continue to live flamboyant life at the expense of the masses. They cannot make sacrifice; they can only tell others to make sacrifice.
In the same system where the government is claiming that there is no money, a government official in charge of the national resources stole several billions of Naira from the government’s purse. That is just one person. So, there is money but the lack of political will and misplaced priority of our leaders are the major problem.
But the government has rolled out palliatives to address the concerns of the poor.
Are we new to the concept of palliative as a country? The answer is no. Palliatives have always complicated the problems of the poor. We had a number of palliatives in the past, which problem did they solve? None.
So, apart from the palliatives you see on TV as a window-show business, the in-thing end up in the pockets of politicians, their families and their supporters. Palliative is like scratching the surface.
The common people are not the real priority of political leaders. Now, the government has claimed to have saved one trillion Naira from fuel subsidy removal. How much of that amount have you heard is going specifically to the education or health sector for development? They will not do that. It is where they can make more money for themselves and their collaborators that they will channel the money to so that people will continue to venerate them. We all heard that the National Assembly alone will use several billions of Naira from the money to buy cars and share to members. So, should that be the priority?
What we need as a country is fundamental change in governance and the system to better the lives of the common people; for the government to prioritise the needs and welfare of people. Let there be social justice. Let the government be for the people and not for a few. Let us not continue to claim to be democrats when in fact we are not practising true democracy. That is the home truth. We don’t have true democracy yet in Nigeria. We need social justice and not ethnic or religious justice. There is hardship in the land.
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