Before you complain that Peter Jackson’s
Lord of The Rings only had 3 parts, I have 2
words for you – The Hobbit.
First of all, shout out to the good man who
dug up this agreement, scanned it and
emailed it to me. As we say here in Blighty;
you Sir, are the dog’s bollocks. Thank you.
I think the first thing that struck me about
this agreement is how strong ASUU are as a
union. I wonder how other unions will feel
if they see the kind of stuff ASUU managed
to extract from government. Part of the
reason for this, in my opinion, is
immediately obvious when you look at the
list of the people who negotiated for both
sides. While the ASUU delegation was led by
its President and senior members, the
government side was led by Gamaliel
Onosode and some other Professors and ex
Pro-Chancellors. The highest ranking
members of the negotiating team from the
government side appear to be some civil
servants who acted as ‘observers’.
This is not to invalidate the agreement of
course – the government clearly signed it so
they should honour it. But when you look at
the composition of people purportedly
negotiating on behalf of the government,
ASUU were already 1 nil up even before
anything was signed. Does anyone know
why things were done this way? Was it that
relations between government and ASUU
had broken down to the point where they
couldn’t sit round a table and trash out the
issues? Not even a minister?
Contd.....

To the agreement proper – there were 4
main issues to be negotiated namely 1)
Conditions of service [salaries] 2) Funding 3)
University autonomy and freedom 4) ‘Other
matters’.
Here are the highlights of the agreement as
I saw them
1. ASUU asked for and got a special salary
structure for themselves called Consolidated
University Academic Salary Structure II
(CONUASS). This CONUASS was further made
up of 3 components – 1) CONUASS I [the
previous one from 2007] 2) Consolidated
Peculiar University Academic Allowances
[CONPUAA] 3) Rent.
The CONPUAA was apparently to capture all
the other allowances that they wanted but
not captured in the CONUASS. Stay with me.
The reason why they were allowed this was
because the committee agreed that
‘Nigerian academics represent the critical
mass of scholars in the society’ and as a
result of this they ‘deserved unique
conditions that will motivate them [...] to
attain greater efficiency’.
2. In exchange for this new pay, ASUU
agreed to be of good behaviour and not do
anything that disrupts the academic
calendar to get whatever it wants i.e. no
striking.
3. Next thing they did was to look at the
countries where Nigerian academics
frequently migrated to e.g Botswana, Ghana
and other developed countries. Based on
this they came up with a salary structure
that would prevent this kind of brain drain.
They called this Table 1. The highest salary
anyone could earn based on this table was
N7.5m per annum.
But ASUU then seemingly looked at the
government’s condition and took pity on
them because the government didn’t have a
lot of money and then gave them some sort
of ‘discount’. This gave birth to Table 2 in
which the highest possible salary was N6m.
The cynic in me thinks this was simply a
clever negotiating tactic but I wasn’t there.
4. As far as I am aware from all of ASUU’s
statements since the strike began, the
government has complied with this
CONUASS salary structure. Indeed it will be
difficult for the government to not pay them
the salary they agreed to. It is the next bit
that seems to have caused all the problems
and it’s easy to see why.

Something called Earned Academic
Allowances was also agreed to by both
parties. In essence, this was supposed to be
a kind of piece-rate payment where ASUU
members as academic staff were paid a
fixed amount for each unit of work they did.
So for supervising postgraduate students, a
Professor was to be paid N25,000 per
student while a Lecturer 1 and Senior
Lecturer were to be paid N15,000 and
N20,000 per student respectively.
For Teaching Practice/Industrial
Supervision/Field Trips, a Professor was
entitled to N100,000 per annum. Further, if a
Professor did more than one field trip in a
year, he would be paid separately for each
one. Even though this money was for field
trips, such an academic staff would be
entitled to mileage and overnight allowance
in line with government regulations. It’s
unclear why, after being paid N100,000 for
a field trip, the same person will then be
entitled to mileage and overnight allowance.
What is the definition of ‘field trip’ I
wonder?
There was also Honoraria for helping to
conduct exams internally or externally
ranging from N45,000 for Master’s to
N105,000 for Doctorate. For moderating
external undergraduate or postgraduate
exams, there was a separate honoraria
ranging from N60,000 for 50
undergraduate students to N80,000 for
more than 10 postgraduate students.
To encourage young academics to ‘further’,
postgraduate study grants were to be given
– N350,000 per session (up to a maximum
of 2 sessions) for a science based masters
and N500,000 per session (up to a
maximum of 4 sessions) for a science based
doctorate. The figures were N250,000 and
N350,000 respectively for non science
studies.

I am not too familiar with the intricacies of
academia but another N200,000 was to be
paid to external assessors for the position
of Reader and Professor. Call duty and
clinical hazard allowances were to be paid
to those who qualified to them per existing
government regulations.
It is unclear what a Responsibility Allowance
is (at least to me) but a Vice Chancellor and
Librarian were entitled to N750,000 per
annum for this allowance while ‘all other
officers’ were entitled to N150,000.
Excess Workload Allowance was to be paid
per hour to teaching staff ranging from
N2,000 per hour for a Graduate Assistant to
N3,500 per hour for a Professor.
You can see the problem with these
allowances – there is no way for the
government to know how much they will
cost in advance. They could cost N10bn or
they could cost N100bn. Lecturers would
simply submit the bills and the government
would have to cough up the money. You can
also see that ASUU played a clever hand by
giving the government a ‘discount’ on the
base salaries while loading up with all sorts
of allowances elsewhere. For a lecturer
earning say N3m per annum, it wont take
much for he/she to earn an extra say 50%
of that salary through all these allowances.
The government isn’t there on the campus
so it will simply get the bill to pay. And I have
not even mentioned corruption.
5. There were other non-salary benefits in
the agreement as well. Each academic staff
was entitled to a car loan equivalent to his/
her annual salary charged at 2% for
administrative cost (stop laughing). They
were also entitled to a car refurbishment
loan for those who wanted to refurbish
their old cars, again charged at 2%. At least
with a car loan you get to see the new car if
you want to, but refurbishment? That’s just
money in the bush.

For housing loans, each academic was
entitled to 8 times his/her annual salary to
buy a house. After 6 years service, an
academic would be entitled to a sabbatical
leave. If this sabbatical was abroad, the
university would pay the ‘transport’ costs for
the academic, a spouse and up to 4 children.
If hospitalised, an academic would be
entitled to 6 months paid sick leave which
could be extended for another 6 months.
Retirement age was increased from 65 to
70 and any one who retired as a Professor
would be entitled to a pension equivalent to
his/her final salary. Indeed even if the
Professor retired before the retirement age
of 70, he would still be entitled to the final
salary pension provided he had served as a
Professor for 15 years in a university.
University staff and their spouses as well as
up to 4 children under the age of 18 were
entitled to health insurance. There are
various other benefits in the agreement but
these are mainly standard stuff like
maternity and 26 days leave.
What I find interesting is that while the
section on pay was quite specific in what
university staff were entitled to, as soon as
you get to the other sections, everything
turns to a ‘recommendation’. So for example
it was recommended that the government
spend N472bn on the universities in 2009,
N498bn in 2010 and N549bn in 2011.
Somehow, the Federal Government was also
supposed to fund the State Universities (at
least recommended to) on a per student
basis i.e. N3.7m per student in total from
2009 to 2011.

Hmmm see jobbing! Just when we thought NASS were more rouge ...ASUU come show more sense! Naija we hail thee sha. Money nor go finish.

in fact, i'm tired of copying and pasting you can read th full gist here.
ynaija.com/opinion/ASUU-part-quatre-we-have-an-agreement/

Thank you sir. Since you are in Blighty as you say, I suppose you are more enlightened that the average Nigerian. You have pasted a summarized version of the ASUU-FG agreement with the rider that ASUU is exposed. Can you kindly draw my attention to which aspects of the agreement you take umbrage at?

prof.femi:
Thank you sir. Since you are in Blighty as you say, I suppose you are more enlightened that the average Nigerian. You have pasted a summarized version of the ASUU-FG agreement with the rider that ASUU is exposed. Can you kindly draw my attention to which aspects of the agreement you take umbrage at?

The greedy and the selfish aspect of the agreement sir.

if you will be so kind, please list (bullet points will do) which aspect you consider greery and selfish. I am an academic, and I believe that means I am in position to provide more information than you see in the agreement.

prof.femi:
if you will be so kind, please list (bullet points will do) which aspect you consider greery and selfish. I am an academic, and I believe that means I am in position to provide more information than you see in the agreement.

i'm sorry, i dont argue facts.

If u agree that Prof Femi and ASUU in general are a greedy bunch, pls like this post. .

However, if u think Prof. Femi and ASUU are NOT greedy bunch, pls like this post

ZackiGp: i'm sorry, i dont argue facts.

That's very okay. It's often those most in need of an education that go around on high horses. If you do feel the need to educate yourself further on this matter, this thread is a good place to start https://www.nairaland.com/1471435/ASUU-strike-lecturer-speaks
Cheers.