LAGOS. Optimism about a possible settlement of Nigeria's five-month university strike was crushed at the end of August by the sudden proscription of university trade unions.
The move followed a meeting between Assisi Asobie, leader of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, and General Oladipo Diya, military government vice president de jure.
Industrial action by the 7,000-strong academic community has crippled the country's 37 universities since April 9.
But the day after the meeting David Attah, chief press secretary to General Sani Abacha, issued a terse statement stating the government had proscribed, with immediate effect, ASUU and two other university-based unions, the Non-Academic Staff Union and the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities. Their assets, including bank accounts, have also been seized.
To give teeth to these pronouncements, General Abacha amended and signed into law two military decrees. The amendment of Decree 11 of 1992, which is the product of the controversial September 1992 agreement with ASUU, aims "at sanitising the succession process and reducing excessive politicisation of the appointment of the vice chancellor, among other things."
The same decree increases the ratio of external members of each university's governing council to allow any proposal or reforms put forward by academic staff to be defeated. Each vice chancellor would only have a non-renewable term of five years.
Another decree signed into law is Decree 55, which provides for a fixed non-renewable term for principal officers such as registrars, bursars and librarians.
One of the surprises of these pronouncements is the proscription order extended to the two other unions. Sources close to the presidency, reveal that SSANU and NASU were banned out of existence because of their repeated calls for government to resume negotiations with ASUU, which is pressing for good working conditions and proper funding for tertiary education.
Reactions to the latest proscription order have been swift and in most cases hostile.
Chuba Okadigbo, a former senator and political adviser to Shehu Shagari, Nigeria's second president, said: "I will appeal to the government to take a further look into the matter as parents and guardians are groaning under the burden of their children's idleness."
Lateef Adegbite, secretary-general of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, appealed to the government to resume negotiation with the university teachers in the interests of young people. "There is no alternative to negotiation. I think that the traditional rulers and the organised private sector should intervene," he said.
One of the leading members of Nigeria's private sector is, however, not enthusiastic about intervening in the on-going crisis.
Christopher Kolade, chairman of Cadbury, said: "I don't react to these things anymore, because reactions are useless and do not seem to achieve anything. Government is signalling that it does not want to negotiate while leaving our children to suffer. But if they insist they will not talk to these teachers on behalf of our children who have suffered enough hardship as a result of the strike, it is unfortunate."
But Nigeria's powerful platform of industrialists, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, said in a statement: "A dark cloud is hanging over Nigeria's technology aspirations because of the inadequate official attention to the unsatisfactory state of the nation's educational system."
"Unless government takes a systematic step to reverse the deteriorating trend, the nation's quest for technological progress would be no more that a forlorn wish.
"All parties involved in the present crisis should allow wise counsel to prevail so that lasting solutions could be found immediately to the paralysis in the country's universities and other levels of education."