The Beautiful Life of the Nigerian University Lecturers That You Do Not Know

[Okey Iheduru]

The beautiful life of the Nigerian university lecturers that you do not know. 

By,

Abdelghaffar Amoka 

About 2 weeks ago, a friend visited me in my office and while we were discussing, he said he will love to be a lecturer. He is currently working in a good FG establishment with a relatively OK salary. He has worked there for about 10 years. I don't know what his salary is, but I asked him about the starting salary for a graduate and he said it's about N220,000 per month. I was like wow! That's not a bad monthly salary for a starter and he said yeah. Then, I told him that coming to academics is not a bad idea but that as a friend, he needs to know a bit about it before making a decision.

So, I told him that if he should leave that job for a university lecturing job, and since he has got no MSc degree yet, he will be employed as a Graduate Assistant (GA) with a starting salary of about N95,000 per month. Is he prepared to drop from close to N230,000.00 to N95,000? He was like that is unbelievable, you are underpaid. And I said that is not all. While you had been getting a promotion after a specified period in your organisation, in the university you won't be promoted after employment till you get a Master's degree.

I continued. As a GA you will have to enrol in a master's program. There is no research grant for staff in training, so you may have to save your salary or take a loan to do the MSc research. As staff in training, you are expected to finish within 3 years. Whenever you are done, you will be upgraded to Assistant Lecturer to earn about N118,270 per month.

As Assistant Lecturer, you enrol for a PhD. There is still no PhD research grant except you are lucky to get a TETFund scholarship. If you aren't lucky, you save part of your salary for the PhD research which you are expected to finish within 5 years. It could take a longer time.

3 years later you are expected to have published 1 journal paper or gone to conferences to present 2 papers from the research you did with your salary to be qualified for promotion. If you don't have that, the years you have taught do not matter, you will have to wait until you meet the said requirement. If you succeeded, you will be promoted to the rank of Lecturer II with a starting salary of about N129,724 per month.

3 years later you are expected to have published 3 journal papers with conference papers from the research you did with your salary to be qualified for promotion to Lecturer I. If you don't have that, you will have to wait until you meet the requirement irrespective of the years you have taught. If you succeeded, you will get a salary of close to N160,809 per month as Lecturer I.

The next promotion after another 3 years is to the rank of Senior Lecturer. To qualify for this rank, you must have obtained your PhD with at least 6 journal papers in recognised journals and 4 conference papers. Without meeting the waiting period, PhD, and the publication requirement, you won't be promoted no matter the number of years and number of students you have taught. Note that you will do the research with your personal fund and pay for the publication with your personal fund. As a senior lecturer, you will have a salary of N222,229 per month. That is the salary of a starter in your organisation in same Nigeria.

The promotion to the rank of Reader (Associate Professor) will come after 3 years and after meeting the research and publication requirements of 10 journal papers and 5 conference papers, PG supervision, etc. That earns you a salary of N277,179 per month. Then you become a Professor 3 years later after meeting its own research and publications requirement 15 journal papers and 7 conference papers, PhD supervision, etc., to earn

 a salary of N332,833 per month.

With the increasing number of students, loads of script to mark, teaching does not count for promotion but the output from the research that is not provided for. You save your salary to earn a promotion. No book grant, you buy books for yourself with your salary. Nigerian public University lecturers are perhaps the only workers that use their salary to work to achieve the criteria set for their promotion.

I told him that if he should join the academics now, it will take him the next 12 years at least, to become a Senior Lecturer to earn the salary of a starter in his present organisation. And that since FG thinks the lecturers deserve no pay rise, it will take him the next 15 years of serious academic and research output to earn his present salary in his present organisation. Meanwhile, he will have to fund all that with his salary for that 15 years. 

I asked if he still want to be a lecturer and he was mute. He was like this is bad and not fair. Then I said, when you see us in class teaching with all smiles and doing our best, it is not because we have a good salary and working conditions, but because we love the job and try to manage the little we are receiving to get the job done.

This is the life of the academic that you do not know. Their life may look glittering but it is not gold.

The poor welfare and work environment is telling on the quality of the output from the university. Some lecturers, especially the younger ones, are already getting pissed off and leaving or planning to leave. So, how long can we sustain this? Everyone keeps saying every lecturer should have a side hustle and stop complaining. That will be the worst thing to happen to Nigerian universities. Some of our colleagues with side hustle just come to teach and leave to manage their side hustle. You can ask the students the impact of such a lecturer on them. You don't want to have a university where lecturers just come to teach and leave for their side hustle. A university is not designed that way.

President Buhari, Adamu Adamu, Nasiru El-Rufai in 2013/2014 gave a detailed explanation on the several reasons why ASUU is always declaring strike actions. As a matter of fact, I have never seen a comprehensive article like El-Rufai's write-up on why ASUU is always on strike. Go back and read their words and listen to their videos and stop behaving like you need a thinking cap.

ASUU fight is for the survival of the system where you want your child to come for a degree program. We have helped the state governors to destroy public primary and secondary education. You have a choice to take side with the FG towards the destruction of the remnant of the education system or join the fight to save the system. The choice is all yours.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Speechless.

Is this really true?

Thanks

Toyin

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[Seun Bamidele]

It is absolutely true.

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

And please, the ASUU people need to stop the pity party and the emotional blackmail. Nigeria's higher education sector is rotten, and ASUU shares the blame and must hold itself to account. Problems are not solved by appealing to pity and sympathy and by telling emotional stories. They're solved through a sober, self-reflexive, rational, and evidence-based holistic assessment of the issues at stake.

On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 12:57 PM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Beware of the danger of a single story--single story literally and figuratively. How many Nigerian graduates are earning N200,000 a month like the person cited in this story? They say you can make data say anything you want it to say, and this is a classic example of that.

Then there are the unsaid and the unspoken nuances, one of which is that the kernel of that story, that graduates who work outside the university sector often have to take a paycut if they want to change careers and join the academy, is universal, not uniquely Nigerian. It is true almost everywhere. In the American academy, many of our students, especially those who go into tech, finance, biotech, energy, and other private sector jobs, go on to out-earn us, their former professors, on their first, entry-level jobs

If ASUU wants to be selective with data to further a particular narrative, that is their prerogative, but there are many nuances to the story, which even the writer of this piece knows.

This, of course, does not mean that ASUU people are not underpaid. They are. Or that they don't deserve a raise. They do. Their last major pay increase, if I'm correct, was more than 10 years ago, and that's unacceptable. Nigeria's runaway inflation alone has eroded their salary and allowances, so a review is overdue. 

What is not helpful and is disingenuous is the ASUU propaganda staple of citing the examples of senators, political appointees, bankers, oil workers, and other high-earning atypical professionals and workers to bolster their case. My retort is that they should go and join those professions. 

Nobody who wants to make good money or who prioritized money in life joins the academy, not in Nigeria and not in North America, or Asia, or Europe. People become academics primarily because they love the life of the mind. Being as rich as a senator, politician, oil worker, investment banker, or other private sector operatives is not part of the calling and should not be invoked to make the case that ASUU deserves better pay, a case which makes itself and stands on its own merit.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGNjNhaEQDzKkrOwqA2ziTtyrqFFqoL_vYo-c4ShDvofJML1wQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Beware of the danger of a single story--single story literally and figuratively. How many Nigerian graduates are earning N200,000 a month like the person cited in this story? They say you can make data say anything you want it to say, and this is a classic example of that.

Then there are the unsaid and the unspoken nuances, one of which is that the kernel of that story, that graduates who work outside the university sector often have to take a paycut if they want to change careers and join the academy, is universal, not uniquely Nigerian. It is true almost everywhere. In the American academy, many of our students, especially those who go into tech, finance, biotech, energy, and other private sector jobs, go on to out-earn us, their former professors, on their first, entry-level jobs

If ASUU wants to be selective with data to further a particular narrative, that is their prerogative, but there are many nuances to the story, which even the writer of this piece knows.

This, of course, does not mean that ASUU people are not underpaid. They are. Or that they don't deserve a raise. They do. Their last major pay increase, if I'm correct, was more than 10 years ago, and that's unacceptable. Nigeria's runaway inflation alone has eroded their salary and allowances, so a review is overdue. 

What is not helpful and is disingenuous is the ASUU propaganda staple of citing the examples of senators, political appointees, bankers, oil workers, and other high-earning atypical professionals and workers to bolster their case. My retort is that they should go and join those professions. 

Nobody who wants to make good money or who prioritized money in life joins the academy, not in Nigeria and not in North America, or Asia, or Europe. People become academics primarily because they love the life of the mind. Being as rich as a senator, politician, oil worker, investment banker, or other private sector operatives is not part of the calling and should not be invoked to make the case that ASUU deserves better pay, a case which makes itself and stands on its own merit.

On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 12:35 PM Seun Bamidele <oluwaseun...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Okey Iheduru]

Yes, it's absolutely true! However, the write-up only scratched the surface of that truth. If you go deeper, you'll demand to know why folks still show up in class every day.

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[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

Five small questions for you:

1. How do you measure being underpaid? Someone in the City University of New York, making $60,000, is far worse than his colleague at Benue State University. 
2. And how do we relate pay to productivity? They are always disconnected.
3. How do we do a comparative analysis of what each person is entitled to in a national economy?
4. And who is doing well in a depressed economy, other than those with access to other incomes?
5. And how do you reconcile your argument on failed state to a crisis. You cannot have it both ways. A failed state, as you argued, cannot have a successful education system.

TF

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Oga Falola,

Questions 1, 2, and 4 are rhetorical ones, with the answers embedded in them. And I agree totally with those answers and points. However, I want you to leverage your stature and immense intellectual capital to make our ASUU friends realize the reality conveyed by those questions. You should honestly forward those questions to them because they're carrying on in complete disregard of the nuances articulated in those questions. Question 4 is particularly poignant. If everyone is suffering from income deficit, low pay, and a mismatch between income and rising prices in a comatose economy, can we isolate the compensation of only a group of professionals as a special case of economic disenfranchisement and proceed to argue that it should be addressed in separately from the plight of other workers and fellow citizens?

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[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

This is the best time for ASUU to fight.

Why?

2023!

Those in power will not want the opposition to use ASUU to expose them.

They will hold meetings, agree, sign, and renege after the elections.

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[Moses Ochonu]

Exactly. And two years down the road they will repeat the charade. The new government will respond by making more promises it can’t fulfill and will sign another agreement it will renege on, and then another strike will follow…. and another, in a rinse and repeat cycle that yields little to nothing and further destroys the university system. 

Who was it that said the classic definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome?

Sent from my iPhone

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Why don't we take this piece on Nigerian academia purely on it's merits and not read into it what it neither states nor suggests?

It does not compare academic salaries with those of politicians. Neither does the article compare academics with other workers in the spirit of a US academic comparing themselves with those in such high flying industries as IT. 

The focus seems to be on the idea of a living wage, leading to questions about the sustainability of the Nigerian work force and economy evoked by Moses' question of what the most Nigerians earn in the first place.

When one compares the academic salaries mentioned with the cost of housing in Nigeria, in which a tenant has to pay a year's rent in advance, along with associated fees, pay children's school fees, provide one's own water, as many do, cope with epileptic electricity in a world of generators, manage poor public transport and cope with costly and challenging health  care and security issues of various levels of intensity, all in the context of funding one's scholarship, linked to one's promotion and income, those salary  figures are frightening.

As for the question of why academics have to be privileged over other sectors in terms of rights to negotiate for better salaries, if I'm interpreting Moses correctly, did doctors not go on strike the other day? Do non-academic staff not also press for higher wages?

Moses has presented on his Facebook wall superior arguments to those he has stated here.

The best thing he has stated here, from what I recall, is that it's been ten years since academic staff salaries were upwardly reviewed. Most of the other arguments he presents here look problematic to me.

His acknowledgement of when last academic salaries were raised links with his Facebook arguments-which I wish he would post here, along with those of Usman Isyaku,another analyst he referenced, presenting an economic solution to the problem- relating to the question why have academic salaries not been raised for so long?

Moses argues the money is simply not there and that the current funding model of almost complete dependence on FG  is impractical.

He argues for raises in tuition fees and significant self funding by universities within a privatisation model. He gives Kwara State University as an example of such self funding, though it's not privatised but largely self sustaining.

He also argues for NUC oversight of compliance of standards by teachers within a context of flexible pay related to performance metrics and decentralized negotiations in which each university argues it's own case, if I recall correctly.

Those who disagree argue that the implementation of such ideas would finally destroy the system bcs FG does not have the political will and the technocratic culture required to oversee such a system and would lead to the shutting out of most Nigerians from a university education.

Usman Isyaku argues that a university education does not have to be for everyone, that number of graduates does not translate to economic growth and that those who can't afford the increased fees should be able to get scholarships.

The arguments are richer than this but this is what I recall. Apologies for any misrepresentations.

The merit of those arguments, in my view, particularly when read as presented by those who originated them, is primarily in their efforts to think structurally, to propose solutions based upon a holistic perspective linking university funding to the national economy, and to responsibilities of teachers, values that hold whatever one may think of the specific proposals they make.

Thanks

Toyin

[Toyin Falola]

Great one:

The real struggles are to:

1. Put development on the agenda of the state
2. Create a diversified economy
3. Create an enabling environment for individuals to manifest their talents, creativity, entrepreneurship, etc.

And you will see that not many will be calling for pay increase.

Salaries, no matter the percentage of increase, is a temporary device---they will be consumed by inflation, currency devaluation, dollarization, etc.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfN188Sec2qt1QAfTU2HH5V_Wd0_pDLD0X43TUXa8tdBWQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Moses Ochonu]

Toyin Adepoju,

That was by and large a good synopsis of my and Usman’s Facebook interventions. I have been thinking of reposting those updates here but today’s been a really busy day. 

Also, the comments, discussions, and proposals on those two posts of mine are in some ways as rich if not richer than my own analysis and proposals, and I wish I had the time to also post some of the most innovative and intriguing of the comments/proposals by my Facebook interlocutors.

You’re absolutely right that the conversation here is a much narrower discussion than the structural, holistic discussions Usman and I are sparking on Facebook.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 16, 2022, at 6:01 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfN188Sec2qt1QAfTU2HH5V_Wd0_pDLD0X43TUXa8tdBWQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[segun...@gmail.com]

Moses,

I think a history of salary structures in Nigeria at Independence and before the military incursion into Nigerian politics is self evident that  academics were better paid than most staff in the ministries and political officeholders in Nigeria. There were only two Federal Universities at that time: University of Ibadan and University of Lagos. The first defunct three Regions namely, Eastern Region had University of Nigeria Nsukka, Western Region, University of Ife, Ile-Ife and Northern Region, Ahmad Bello University Zaria. At that time no university lecturers, to my knowledge, went on strike because of disproportionate salary structure or unpaid monthly salaries. 

My understanding of the ASUU is that they have been disproportionately underpaid and their services  are consistently undervalued by governments in power. 

There is no reason why those in power should earn more than their professors. I believe it is morally unjust to pay university professors peanuts considering the enormous amount of work they do every semester. 

It is morally and intellectually offensive to tell university teachers to go and join politics if they want to earn like members of the National Assembly. It is an insult and it should stop. 

Can lecturers unilaterally increase their income as members of the National Assembly have done? University teachers are not rogues!! 

Ogungbemi. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 16, 2022, at 3:12 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:



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