Fayemi versus ASUU: Myth, mythology and the fallacy of representation

BY OLUMIDE OLUGBEMI-GABRIEL

When news broke that the governor of Ekiti State, the cerebral and mercurial Dr. Kayode Fayemi, who is my own personal person and brother had posited in faraway Paris, to the effect that a professor in Nigerian universities earns about the same pay as a governor in the country, I dismissed it as fake news or April fool gimmick. From a personal standpoint forged in many years of following his person as well as his antecedents, Dr. Fayemi is not known to be a frivolous person or careless talker.

A fine scholar himself, who is married to another equally formidable one who matches him pound for pound in scholarship and fecundity (I refer to Mrs. BisiAdeleye-Fayemi), I blatantly refused to believe the statement attributed to him on the ASUU/FG perennial dogfights. The KayodeFayemi that I know is also not given to flowery verbosity and bombast of the type common to politicians and public officials in our country. So initially, I took the circulating news with a pinch of salt. Even after I read some of the headlines and snippets of the news, I quickly dismissed them as products of our media‘s predilection for sensationalism and catchy headlines bereft of supporting content and substance. But like a bad dream, Dr. Fayemi’s position on Nigerian lecturers’ pay refused to let me be; I couldn’t ignore the underlying fallacy, the inherent contradictions, the myth on which the statement rests, and the serious implications of the deliberate misrepresentation which the statement represents.

So I decided to do due diligence by visiting the online platforms of reputable media organizations to verify the authenticity or veracity of the news being pinned on my brother and scholar-governor. Alas! I discovered to my utter shock and shame that indeed, DrFayemi made the statements in question on the sideline of President Buhari’s meeting with Nigerians living in France, on Monday, November 12, 2018. According to one of my sources, Punch newspaper online, apparently uncomfortable with the current ASUU strike, Fayemi, among other statements credited to him said that: “A university professor earns more than me as a governor. My salary as a governor is N500,000. Most university professors earn about the same amount, if not more.” If there was ever a classic misrepresentation of facts and deliberate dissemination of falsehood, this stands out. I’m so disappointed and I feel let down.

Unknown to DrFayemi, with his false and ludicrous statements in Paris, he might have needlessly let himself down among Nigerian scholars, the academic community and other discerning minds. One of such scholars, a brother and colleague, contacted me and with barely concealed disappointment and wicked sarcasm, offered: “Our old friend in Ekiti has reportedly claimed that lecturers earn more than he earns as governor. Hmm! Another Yaya Bello might have descended on Ekiti!” Imagine DrFayemi being compared to a character like Yaya Bello; whose name is cast in solid gold as an unmitigated disaster and the poster boy of infantile gubernatorial (mis)behaviour, political recklessness and a thought/speech process that borders on clownishness. It doesn’t get more macabre than that.

In a nation where political office holders parade no certificates at all, or get into office with Oluwole certificates; or register for Senior Secondary School Certificate of Education as adult school candidate; in a country where the only qualification one needs to contest the highest office in the land is mere evidence of secondary school education; where nitwits, buffoons and an assortment jokers parade the corridor of power, DrFayemi, PhD (University of London) is in a class of his own and an invaluable political brand. I’m still perplexed as to how and why such a man would so carelessly attempt to destroy his own brand for political expediency.

Yes! I agree that Dr Fayemi has the right to freedom of expression. But he certainly has no right whatsoever to so attempt to pull wool on the eyes of Nigerians or to deploy sophistry in service of political expediency. It is a satanic lie that Nigerian governors, and Fayemi for that matter, earn as little as N500,000. Let’s even concede it to him that he earns a paltry and laughable N500,000, does that amount constitute the total package of the governor? What about the humungous and obscene allowances our governors earn? What about the ubiquitous Security Vote (unaudited and untaxed) which is one of the legendary and ingenious methods our governors have devised to dip their hands in the cookies jar?

Dr. Fayemi’s Paris statement9quoted here) is fallacious, criminally misleading, and a big disservice to men and women who toil and sacrifice day and night to keep our universities running despite the meagre pay they receive for their efforts. In order not to let lore race ahead of leitmotif, there is a need to present the facts as they are in Nigeria presently.

Let’s even accept that a governor earns a salary of N500,000 as monthly pay (outside the allowances and pecks of office which include free housing, medicals, transport, feeding, clothing, security, over-generous pension, etc.), that’s not the totality of a governor’s pay. In fact, a political position which attracts party nomination fees in excess of N20 million cannot be that cheap in monthly remuneration in a country famed for the gluttony of her public officials. If the remuneration is so paltry, then we must all ask why politicians kill to become governors or to remain in that seat Anyway, that’s by the way.

The bitter and ugly truth is that, after deduction of tax and pension commitments, there is no professor in public universities who earns N500,000 in Nigeria. This is the sad reality. When you consider what it takes to reach professorial rank in Nigeria, and you juxtapose that with the pay which Dr. Fayemi announced with glee in Paris, then the sad reality hits home. More saddening, in Nigeria, an academic promoted to the prestigious rank of professor needs a minimum of ten years (earning steps) before s/he can earn a paltry N502,000 before tax and other deductions, after which his/her salary drops below the much vaunted N500,000 which Dr. Fayemi announced to the world with aplomb. But for ASUU and its countless agitations, the Nigerian academic would be earning the same pay as a roadside vulcaniser. The pauperisation of Nigerian academics is the stuff of legend, stories and academic articles in Africa and the rest of the world. The brain-drain which we suffer in our ivory towers is an attendant consequence of this pauperisation.

Dr. Fayemi should know better. And because I know he knows better, I won’t spare him my koboko, righteous indignation and excoriation despite our filial and political association. A man who earned a first class PhD, who was once a lecturer himself and who pays the salaries of professors should have shownmore clarity, better understanding and solidarity with Nigeria’s pauperised academic class, which is gradually going into ‘extinction’. Easily, one can pigeonhole Fayemi’s position (more like gaffe) within the proverbial signification of Yoruba “bamubamulayoawa o mob’ebi n pa omoenikankan, bamubamulayo.” The aforementioned Yoruba proverb finds related spirit and anchorage in an Achebian postulation in Things Fall Apart, about how those who have had their palm kernel cracked for them by the benevolent spirits so often forget to be grateful. It’s the “I’m at the top so I don’t care what become of others” mentality. One had expected a man who forged his name in the furnace of activism to be more circumspect. I’m so angry and disappointed.

Am I not an academic? How much is my pay compared to my investments and sacrifices to qualify to teach in the first place, and to remain an academic respectively? From their meagre pay, Nigerian academics sponsor themselves through postgraduate education especially the mental and financial rigours of the PhD programme. Forget about TETFUND postgraduate scholarship; only a fraction of lecturers get it; about 90% of academics in public and private universities self-sponsor their PhD like me. To get promoted, Nigerian academics take money from their meagre salaries to get published. What about the responsibilities (both earned and forced) which being a lecturer impose on you in a country without social security for citizens? Is it not an existential reality that the monstrosity of a man’s head determines the monstrosity of his headaches? Once you are identified as a lecturer, you are a victim of predatory thinking in the society; under false beliefs and assumptions, people across a wide spectrum run to you for help and succour.

Let me ask these questions rioting in my big head: How did DrFayemi miss the implication of pontificating on a Nigerian professor’s abysmal salary from one of the epic centres of world scholarship and nation-state wellness and rightness (I mean France)? Did he bother to find out the salary of a French professor and did he compare same with the unfortunate salary of his Nigerian counterpart? In West Africa, Nigerian academics are known to receive the lowest pay. A senior lecturer in Uganda, a country to which Nigeria sends academics under Technical Aid Corp, earns 7 million UGX (700,000 Naira). Let’s not even go to South Africa or North African countries; that will be tantamount to doing obscene comparison.

I say shame on our political class who help themselves to the commonwealth, but demand unparalleled sacrifices from workers who can only shout, fight and strike before they earn the supposed take-home which often cannot take them near their homes.

On a personal note, the ongoing ASUU strike couldn’t have come at a worst time; those who know know. But I have since come to a painful conclusion that ASUU is about the only force standing between the political class and the bastardisation of tertiary education in Nigeria. Look around you; politicians are busy putting up ivory towers like they are executing constituency projects. Every one of these people, in a toxic mix of insanity, clannishness, economic foolishness and lack of foresight intend to site at least one institution in their homesteads. Like harmattan fire and in the copy-copy mentality of a typical Nigerian, these institutions are now being established at the speed of light: Army University, Naval University, Air Force University, Police University, DSS University, Civil Defence University, Road Safety University, Fire Service University, VIO University, Brigade of Guards University, Maritime University, ICT University; all these funny, phoney, classless and ‘atutupoyoyo’ universities in a country whose major universities cannot compete favourably with the best in the world because of inadequate funding, brain drain and political interference and lack of financial commitment. Therefore, ASUU has my unalloyed and total support for its ongoing strike and all efforts it intermittently deploy to stop the situation from going from worse to worst.

As for my brother and governor, DrKayodeFayemi, there is a side of me which wants to believe that his statement was a joke taken too far. In the process, he scored an own goal. I hope he would retrace his steps and offer some clarifications on his position on some of the vexed issues his Paris statements have thrown up for posterity sake, or he risks alienation from his base and a critical segment of the Nigerian society. Fayemi has always stated his desire to retire to the classroom after his political sojourn. Well with his current attitude, orientation, sentiments and positions on issues related to lecturers’ remuneration and other issues related to appropriate funding of tertiary education in Nigeria, I hope there would still be a place to return to when that time comes for him. For anyone who is uncomfortable with this piece owing to my filial and political association with Fayemi, please save it, I’m not in the mood. As a scholar, Uncle Kay is aware that it is only on the platform of disagreements that scholarship thrives.

For now, I leave Dr Kayemi Fayemi with my unmitigated anger and feeling of disappointment.

Olumide Olugbemi-Gabriel
A Very Angry Nigerian Academic