Tinubu Regime: A Regime that Pardons the Criminals but Starves its Scholars

It will take a good observer just a little observation to conclude that Tinubu regime is all out against intellectuals in Nigeria. One can also easily conclude that criminals will always have their ways because we live in a country that values criminals. While no one should be encouraged to join any criminal gangs, it pays to be a criminal in Nigeria than to be an academic. Those who say “school na scam” are finally vindicated by government’s actions and inactions.

In Nigeria, murderers, drug barons, hardened criminals, gargantuan and merciless looters can always expect presidential pardon. Read a column I wrote three years ago before Tinubu happened to Nigeria, you will find out that what Tinubu did is not new. He has precedent in pardoning criminals. It is only that he takes it to another level. The column is titled “Steal, Loot, and Mercilessly Milk Nigeria—You Will be Relevant in its Politics.”

Academics, except for the few ones that have political worth, are useless and worthless in the eyes of the Nigerian government. It is trite to say this, but it still has to be said: “A country that debases its intellectuals has already lost its way and its future, as it will continue to grope in darkness.” 

Once you choose to be a teacher at any level in Nigeria (primary, secondary, or tertiary), you have chosen to be poor with the utopian expectation that the reward of a teacher is in heaven, as if all teachers will make it to heaven. Nigerian government makes teachers wretched and absolutely wretched. 

With the exception of university teachers, teachers in government primary and secondary schools seem to have resigned to fate. They seem to have agreed to be rewarded in heaven. Their unions, if they still exist, are completely emasculated. They are toothless bulldog that could also not bark. 

However, the Academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU seems to be the only teachers’ union that still barks but about to lose its ability to bite. This ongoing industrial action should be a defining one. It is either ASUU wins the battle and reclaims its relevance or loses out completely to a government that pays lip service to education and pretends to care through what it calls students’ loan. What is the fate of a trader that takes a loan but only come to realize that the market where the loan is to be invested has been shutdown? 

I just hope NELFUND will continue to fund university students while schools are under lock and key. The most important thing, after all, is to be registered as students. It is not a must to graduate. Results can always be forged to be appointed as ministers or into any juicy position in a regime that values criminals but wages hunger war against its academics and despises its gurus.  

Wait o! Could it be that our rulers are shameless? Are they not aware that the world is watching them and laughing at them? Do they really have conscience? I know of a government appointee who confessed that he felt ashamed to tell the world at a global conference that a professor earns less than $1,000 a month. That was Arc. Sonny Echono, the Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). He said this in 2022, three years ago. As I write, a professor earns approximately $360 a month. Can you imagine what other low-ranked lecturers earn? This is exactly how Ochonu puts it in an interview:

“On salaries of lecturers, I feel ashamed because I had a privilege to represent Nigeria at a global conference where former presidents and prime ministers were in attendance and I was asked whether it was true that a professor after 20 years still earns less than $1,000 a month; I couldn’t answer that question I only said that we are doing something about it.”

Isn’t it funny and laughable that the declaration of strike by ASUU was immediately followed by a no-work-no-pay threat? Nigerian academics are immediately treated like criminals for asking for a take-home salary that can actually take them home. They are not asking for luxury. They are not asking for N21 million monthly salary that our lawmakers still complain could not take them home. Nigerian professors are the least paid in Africa and probably in the world. While the highest paid lecturers (professors) earn around $360 monthly, the least paid lecturers (graduate assistants) earn around $100 per month. The whole annual salary of a low-ranked lecturer in University of Lagos, for instance, is not enough to rent a three-bedroom flat in Akoka where Unilag is situated in Lagos. Isn’t this ridiculous!?

A former Vice-Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Prof. Wande Abimbola, who later taught in several US universities, was alarmed when he learnt about the pittance being paid to professors in Nigeria. He claimed, in a widely reported interview recently, that what his gardener earns in the United States as wage in three 3 hours is what a Nigerian professor earns in a month. 

Although Arc. Echono confessed that he is ashamed of the crumbs being given to Nigerian professors as salaries, our rulers in Abuja have shamelessly given a directive that even the crumbs should be stopped because lecturers are on strike as if they are wage earners. It is this same government that gifted Nigerian athletes billions of naira recently just for kicking ball and exercising their bodies. This is really not a country for academics and the serious-minded. To hell with the no-work-no-pay directive. 

While Professor Chris Piwuna, the new ASUU President, commendably chose not to react to that nonsense (no-work-no-pay directive) when asked to react during an interview, ASUU should hold world press conference. The union should be strategic. It should address global media representatives and inform the global community about the slavish salaries being paid to Nigerian professors. I suggest France—which has become the real home of President Tinubu where he normally travels to for working vacation—as the venue to address a world press conference.

Piwuna should tell the world why Nigerian universities fail to attract foreign scholars and why the few we had some decades ago fled our universities as if they were a plague. ASUU should tell the world how our teachers in primary, secondary, and tertiary schools who trained many Nigerians who are now prominent figures in the world today are being deliberately impoverished and starved by a government that is adept at weaponizing hunger and poverty.

In addition, ASUU should urge its members to Japa en masse. This is the time for exodus. The Nigerian Pharaohs do not need the service of academics. Those who choose to stay back should know that PhD is virtually useless if not in the university. And this is one of the pains of academics that many do not understand. If a PhD holder leaves an academic job in Nigeria, he or she ends up competing for non-existing jobs with those with far lesser qualifications because the PhD will not give them an edge—it has become useless. It is psychologically traumatizing that having spent years (a decade or even more), going through academic stress to acquire an MSc and PhD (after a first degree), one ends up being pushed out of the ivory tower by a government that trigger-happily wages war against scholarship and scholars. 

It is sad to note that the ivory tower “harms” academics in a way. It reconfigures them, it resets their system, it makes them preoccupied with study and students’ assessment, such that they end up only being good at teaching and research. Those who say university dons should not rely solely on their salaries are right only to the extent that they don’t understand how mentally taxing and time-consuming academic work is. They also erroneously think every academic has the wherewithal to invest or do other profitable things. They also feign not to understand that not all investments yield especially in Nigerian environment that is not conducive for investment. Many academics have invested and become bankrupt. That leaves them with salaries as their only means of survival. I can give instances among colleagues. Enough of this humiliation!

May I use this medium to offer my condolences to that distinguished Physics professor, AbdulGafar Amoka, from ABU Zaria, on the passing of his father yesterday. Professor Amoka is a well-known ASUU intellectual warrior. May the Almighty forgive his father and have mercy on him.

Abdulkadir Salaudeen 

salahuddeenabdulkadir@gmail.com