New education minister will resolve ASUP/COEASU strike – Comrade Ocheme

Education-page-1-pixAs the on-going strike by the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) and Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU), lingers on 10 months after, with no solution in sight, Vice chairman of Kaduna Polytechnic ASUP, Comrade Jerry Ocheme, says only new minister of education can resolve the impasse. He spoke on the 13 ASUP demands and government’s efforts so far, in this interview with ABDULRAHEEM AODU and OJO SOLA OLUSEGUN

What was the outcome of your recent National Executive Council meeting?
The meeting was as a result of the long strike that the union has been on and the whole idea was to find a way out, we have been on strike for almost a year now. The issues we are contending are 13-point demands that we placed squarely before government at the state and federal level. So far, there is no headway because government delegation that was supposed to attend the meeting at the instance of the Senate Committee on Education headed by Comrade Uche Chukwumerije, were not at the meeting. The minister of labour, the supervising minister on education and secretary to the government were to be in attendance, but unfortunately, they were not able to attend the meeting.

Did they give any reason for not attending?
We were told that they were attending to some national issues including the centenary celebration. The meeting that was supposed to be held today, we don’t know what the reasons are, but whatever may be the case, we cannot be celebrating 100 years of nationhood and having problem of getting our education right. I think the celebration of our existence is good but celebration of our progress would have been the best.

Some polytechnics including Federal Polytechnic Oko and Federal Polytechnic Kaura Namoda have just pulled out of the strike, is there similar plan by Kadpoly?
I don’t think that is true because we just spoke to the chairman of ASUP at Oko and he said there is nothing like that but for Kaura, yes we are aware that they have suspended the strike. For us here, we held a congress today to discuss the strike. We had an emergency local congress here at Kaduna Polytechnic having considered all the issues; we had to divide the house for voting. Those who were in favour of continuing with the strike were more in number than those who felt the strike should be suspended. So, the majority have their way. It is a democratic process.

As the federal government seems to ignore your demands, do you have other plans to salvage the situation?
We believe that Nyesom Wike has no sufficient understanding of the plights of polytechnic education including colleges of education. But we do believe that there will be substantive minister very soon for that ministry. We expect that if the substantive minister comes, he should be able to prioritize putting the polytechnics back to school. Even if all remaining chapters of polytechnics have suspended, the question is, are the issues on our agitation necessary.

Can you enumerate some of these demands?
Yes. One of them is the issue of dichotomy between the holders of first degree and HND. The holders of HND at every level are being discriminated against at public places and for academic progression. Somebody with HND has difficulty in proceeding to further education without some forms of discrimination. When someone with equivalent qualification from university proceeds in master degree, the one with HND may not be given automatic opportunity to proceed to acquire higher qualification and self-actualization.
Even at work, those who had HND were discriminated against they will not be allowed to hold certain positions, they are not allowed to reach the peak of their career, they don’t enter work in the same level with their counterparts with degree, whether BSc. or BA and this is not right considering the input that we make to those children and at the end they were trained as professionals, they have higher curriculum in terms of contacts, yet they are discriminated against in work places which we feel is not fair and is not just.

We have that of salary progression, which was supposed to be a simple salary migration to address certain finances, which was part of our agreement with federal government in 2009 that we referred to as CONTISS 15. It was to address one level move and certain shortcomings being tertiary remunerations. It has been implemented according to tertiary ranking from senior lecturer and above, but below that government has not addressed it and we felt it is not fair.?
We need a commission for the polytechnic. The polytechnic system is big enough to be on its own just like the university and colleges of education. Up till now we are still under National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), which is a board regulating a lot of other institutions including technical schools and monotechnics. The job for NBTE is too high and it is only a board it cannot pass problem of polytechnic to the level it ought to quickly and on time. We also have the issue on regulating the polytechnic system including the condition of service and Polytechnic Act. Even the law is obsolete and is no longer serving, as it ought to serve in modern terms.

How many of these demands have been met?
Well, one of the demands I have not mentioned is the issue of setting up constituting governing council for public polytechnics. That one, as far as federal polytechnics are concerned, almost all the polytechnics have their governing board constituted. That has been met. The CONTISS 15 committee has been set up to see to it. The committee has taken two steps forward and takes six steps backward, the CONTISS 15 that they said would be paid in two instalments in March this year and September; none of these instalments has been paid.

We heard that the outgoing supervising minister is now saying that the entire thing is illegal, he said the salaries and wages (department) are cautioning him, but they were part of the agreement and they were also aware that the money was budgeted and passed through the National Assembly budgeting system. A committee has been set up on the dichotomy between holders of degree and HND, the committee has done some good work but unfortunately, until now we are not even sure whether government is aware of the enormous responsibility of bridging gap between these basic educations. Government is still sensitising on the pay system. We also have the issue of White Paper; nothing has been done on that.

Is there any timeline set by ASUP when you intend to review your stand on the strike?
I’m just a vice chairman of Kaduna polytechnic chapter. The ongoing strike is national. The decision to go on strike was NEC’s decision. It is only NEC that can review at what point they intend to suspend or call off the strike. There should be some forms of benchmark but so far, the union has taken different actions to see that we suspend but government is not moving any step forward, apart from setting up governing council, to address the 13-point demands of the union. We know that the very large section of Nigerian youth that are in polytechnic education are suffering from this strike, we are very emotional concerning the time loss to the students. We are also emotional for those who are due for service, they have been released but they cannot finish their course.

What informed the members of Kaduna Polytechnic ASUP’s decision to vote against suspension of the strike?

To be fair to those who want the continuation of the strike, after 10 months of keeping students out of class, you want the government, their elected government to listen to the plight of these institutions. If you look at it from institutional point of view, polytechnic that is owned by government should be able to listen to the cries of the people. Government should see public institutions as social responsibility to those who elected them. So to that effect, government has not been fair in addressing the decay and the demands of polytechnics and colleges of education. So those who are saying let’s continue with the pressure are saying government should be able to take the section of education that is very vital seriously and until government is able to look that way, and to see that it is wrong and will also weaken the education activism in this country, that is their reason. That is not to say they are not going to review their position but I think the onus of addressing the issue lies with government.