The Unmaking of an Elite

When, last month, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body of Nigerian university teachers, forwarded a formal twenty one-day strike notice to the Federal Government (FG), it raised the specter of further disruption to a tertiary education system that, over the past twenty five years, has seen one industrial action too many. Within that period, ASUU has gone on strike at least sixteen times, and may do so yet again if ongoing negotiations with a special committee set up by the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, come to naught.  

ASUU is not the only union within the system with a grievance. Non-academic staff under the aegis of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), and the Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institutes and Associated Institutions (SSAUTHRIAI), have all downed their own share of tools over the years, often in lockstep with the teachers.      

The teachers are in no doubt as to the root cause of the collapse of tertiary education in the country: inadequate funding. Whether it is taking the FG to task for its apparent “failure to honor the 2009 renegotiated agreement” or specifically demanding “improvements in welfare,” there is no denying the sincerity of ASUU’s conviction that underfunding is the prime cause of the system’s decay, and consequently its expectation that increased public funding will translate into better educational outcomes for the universities. 

While one may have reservations as to the ultimate sustainability of this top-down funding model, the claim that Nigerian universities are grossly underfunded stands. At 5.4 percent in 2022, down from a high of 8.4 percent in 2019, annual budget allocation to tertiary education in Nigeria is reportedly among the world’s lowest. The much-lamented physical decrepitude of the public universities tells a story that mere numbers cannot do justice to, and based on this alone, ASUU’s clamor for more money—for its members, if not for the system as a whole—can hardly be faulted.   

Official response to ASUU agitation, while not the most cordial, nonetheless seems to acknowledge the basic justice of the demand for increased funding. The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), a scheme established in 2011 to bolster the sector with mandatory contributions from the private sector; and the newly introduced Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), which aims at “removing the financial barrier to higher education for Nigerian students,” are basically an admission that the system could do with greater cash injection.            

All things considered, then, and for all their apparent antagonism, one that has seen several attempts by the FG to abolish ASUU, it would seem that both sides do in fact agree that the right level of financial infusion is all that is needed to take the beleaguered system out of its current doldrums. 

What this consensus elides is the other—and, it seems to me, more plausible—possibility, which is that the problem with the universities is less about funding, and more about the professoriate, specifically its debasement. If this postulate is accepted, the critical task is to explain how the demotion of the professoriate came to be and indicate how the process may be reversed. 

The central paradox of the devaluation of the Nigerian professoriate, a precursor to the wider degradation and loss of authority of the Nigerian intelligentsia, is that it happened entirely as a result of a social process set in motion by none other than the professoriate itself. Pressured by an ascendant militariat to justify its raison d’être as a class apart from the rest of society, the professoriate instead doubled down on an egalitarianism that may have been noble in intent, and most definitely endeared it to the rest of society, but, in the long run, was fatal to its own identity and amour propre. In due course, the more it tried to resist the antics and intrusions of a militarizing state, the more it felt pulled into the vortex of popular politics and the imperatives of solidarity across class lines, and the more it sacrificed its own distinction as an aristocracy of reason constituted on the basis of merit. For the Nigerian academia, the cost of reaching across class lines to awaken consciousness in the service of social transformation is the erosion of its own prestige; its proletarianization, to put it even more provocatively.  

Thenceforward, as the line separating ASUU as a union of intellectuals from other unions primarily motivated by bread-and-butter issues steadily blurred, it became increasingly difficult for the university teachers to make the case for their own unique treatment. Not only that, having failed to distinguish itself from its ideological allies, the professoriate became gradually indistinguishable, and for all practical purposes socially undistinguished. When, today, non-academic unions across the university system insist on “equal pay for equal work” because, after all, their wives and children “shop in the same market” as the professors, they are merely affirming a principle of “equality” of which ASUU has been the chief exponent down through the years.  

Whether university academics have brought themselves down to the level of non-academics or pulled the latter up to their level, the material effect is the same: in terms of what matters the most to intellectual life—comportment, discernment, reserve—ASUU and NASU have more or less merged into a single entity. 

For the professoriate, the consequences are particularly telling. Stripped of its former prestige, a faculty appointment is now just another job, something to be sought only as a last resort, and only when all other options have failed to materialize.  

Furthermore, having lost its mojo, the professoriate is no longer able to execute its core mission as a center of intellection that gives shape and context to the leading questions and ideas of the age. It comes as no surprise that, when desperate for guidance on any subject (e.g., the economy, politics, social mores, etc.), it is the figure of the pastor and similar pseudo authorities that, increasingly, the Nigerian public turns to. As a matter of fact, insofar as the same public recognizes a Nigerian university professor these days, it is typically as a public-facing activist, rather than as an expert on a specialized branch of knowledge. If there is anything worse than the fatigue that the Nigerian public feels on account of ASUU’s repeated strikes, it is the lack of regard for university teachers. The surge in the number of Nigerian students seeking educational opportunities abroad is partly due to this situation.     

While the situation can be reversed, it is difficult to see any progress being made until the professoriate becomes fully aware of the reality and meaning of its demotion, accepting that this is a situation for which it is culpable, and one that could not have happened without its full acquiescence.  

For the Nigerian university system to have a fighting chance of reclaiming its old glory, the Nigerian professoriate must become elite again.