On Solution to ASUU Strike and Consolidated University Academic

Salary Structure II (CONUASS II) in the Nigerian Universities Using

Optimization Method

HARRISON OBIORA AMUJI*

Department of Statistics

Federal University of Technology, Owerri

NIGERIA

Federal University of Technology, Owerri

PMB 1526, Owerri Imo State

NIGERIA

Federal University of Technology, Owerri

PMB 1526, Owerri Imo State

NIGERIA

Abstract: - In this paper, we applied a dynamic programming model for the optimization of Consolidated

University Academic Salary Structure II (CONUASS II) for the overall interest of the academic staff and the

Nigerian University System at large; the focus of this research was on the decision policy that would help to

enhance the living conditions of lecturers in the Nigerian universities thereby averting frequent strikes and

disruption of academic calendars; strikes delay students and affect their features; hence, anything that can

with many steps. If this policy is applied, a professor at the bar will grow to level 08 and will earn up to at least

double his annual salary (N13,658,325) instead of the current stagnating salary of (N6,020,163) per annum at

the bar; this will make the lecturers happy and discharge their duties with commitments thereby addressing the

perennial strikes in the Nigerian universities.

Universities (ASUU) is a trade union formed in

1978 as an offshoot of the Association of University

Teachers (AUT) that had been in existence; the

reasons for the establishment of ASUU was not only

to protect the interest of its members and influence

government policies as a trade union but also the

interest of Nigeria's entire educational system. The

union offers valuable suggestions on other issues of

national interest, but the government is always on

neglecting their welfare, relegating them to begging,

and paying no attention to everything ASUU stands

for, these resulted to so many strikes by the union.

According to [1], ASUU embarked on 16 strikes in

23 years; the Federal government and lecturers

disagreed over a 13-year MOU. The frequent strikes

are not in the interest of the Nigerian education

system, but strikes have impacted both positively

and negatively on the Nigerian university system.

The positive side of it was the establishment of the

academic calendars, delay in the student’s

graduation, loss of confidence in the public

university system, massive drift of students to

foreign universities, creation of gap in human

development, educational system decay, brain drain,

etc. To bring sanity into the university system and

halt strikes, the Federal government of Nigeria had

an agreement with the union (ASUU) in 2009. The

agreement contains the funding of the Federal

universities, a separate salary structure

academic staff of all public universities in Nigeria,

whatever applies to the Federal universities trickles

down to the State-owned universities.

The cause of the struggle between ASUU and the

government was inadequate and commensurable

remuneration for the work offered by the academic

staff union of the Nigerian universities compared to

their counterparts in Africa and the rest of the world.

It has been a problem and has lingered over a long

period. The remuneration for academic staff is very

of the Nigerian educational system. In order to solve

the problem that resulted in several strikes [2], the

government implemented a sole salary structure for

the federal university academic staff in a circular

issued on December 8, 2009. According to the

circular:

1.“The President and Commander-in-chief of the

Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

has approved a new salary structure for the

Academic Staff of the Federal Universities

2. CONUASS II is a consolidation of the following

components: (i) The consolidated Academic Staff

Salary Structure (CONUASS) approved by the

No. SWC/S/04/S.302/1, 18/01/2007). (ii) The

Consolidated Peculiar University Academic

Allowances (CONPUAA) is exclusively made for

university teaching staff only and derived from

allowances not adequately reflected or not

consolidated in CONUASS. (iii). Rent as approved

by the FGN effective 01/01/2007 (FGN Circular No.

SWC/S/04/S.302/1, dated 18/01/ 2007).

3. The effective date for the CONUASS II is

01/07/2009. (4). All inquiries from this circular

06 & 07 has step 10 as its last step. The associate

structure and overlapping sub-solution; hence, we

use Dynamic programming (DP) as a model.

worse still, the vibrant and experienced academic

staff are leaving the Nigerian university system in

Action (MoA) reached with the union. The union

the non-linear optimization family, but the

relationship. One sub-optimal stage forms the basis

shortcomings is the restriction imposed on its

applications to large-size problems. This restriction

is known as the "curse of dimensionality"; the curse

of dimensionality occurs when the complexity of the

problem increases rapidly because of a little

increase in the number of inputs [4]. Empirically,

dynamic programming was used by the author

to model transportation and logistics problems

and to demonstrate the robustness of dynamic

programming [5]. The author noted that due to

modelled by DP. Hence, a problem can qualify for

DP modeling if it has optimal substructure and

overlapping sub-problems. Dynamic programming

is appropriate when the sub-problem is not

independent. Therefore, Dynamic programming

solves each sub-problem just once and stores the

basis for defining a recursive algorithm to find the

optimal solutions; also, if a problem does not have

overlapping sub-problems, we do not use dynamic

programming.

1.2 Aim and Objectives

This paper aims to find a solution to the ASUU

strike and Consolidated University Academic Salary

Structure II (CONUASS II) in Nigerian Universities

using an optimization method, and the objectives

1. To determine subprograms and their respective

optimal policies

Computer Science/Computation Technique is that

dynamic programming is an optimization technique

that has application in Computer Science with the

sole aim of developing an optimal decision

procedure (algorithm) that will effectively allocate

resources not only for optimal benefit of Computer

Scientists as members of academic staff but for the

general public. DP model and its computing

technique are robust and can handle Computer

Science modeling problems.

Here, we review some related works done by other

researchers in this area; though, there is no direct

work done on a solution to the ASUU strike and

Consolidated University Academic Salary Structure

II (CONUASS II) in the Nigerian Universities using

optimization method yet, there are some related

works on the application of Dynamic programming.

Dynamic programming was used to model

business sustainability that encompasses the

economic (Profits), environmental (Planet), and

sustainability management problem as a

multiple-objective or goal-programming

problem where the level of activity undertaken

affects the three facets of sustainability. Then,

the researcher expanded the multi-objective

programming formulated to a dynamic

programming problem to cover the dynamic

nature of sustainability management. Again,

Dynamic programming (DP) guarantees global

optimality through an exhaustive search of all

of HEVs. Hence, to optimize fuel consumption

in PHEVs, the researchers used DP to find the

optimal power combination of the power

components to meet the power demand of the

algorithm for a discrete discounted cost dynamic

programming problem from the complementary

slackness theorem of linear programming. The

authors observed that the policy improvement

procedure for solving such a problem coincides with

without total enumeration. To develop a DP

recursive formula, we divide the problem into

stages, which are evaluated independently, given a

set of environmental conditions (states). On the

complexity of a large class of problems, [10]

observed that the curse of dimensionality is the

problem caused by the exponential increase in

volume associated with adding extra dimensions to

Euclidean space.

As stated earlier, dynamic programming is applied

in diverse fields such as security. These researchers

[11] used DP to track crimes in Nigeria. They

real-life scenarios. Such applications include

route scheduling. Also, [13] observed that the

programming is the curse of dimensionality. In

trying to solve this restriction, the researchers

used deep learning to solve the problem of the

curse of dimensionality. Their proposed method

was complex but was able to proffer a solution

to the problem. And [14] used multi-objective

dynamic programming to solve optimization

problems. They believed that their model

overcomes the poor performance of standard

the optimal decision for the entire system.

On the other hand, [15] observed that dynamic

programming uses the concepts of sub-optimization

and the principle of optimality in solving a problem.

An optimal policy (or a set of decisions) has the

property that whatever the initial state and initial

decision are, the remaining decisions must

constitute an optimal policy about the state resulting

from the first decision. They used dynamic

programming to determine the optimal course

They noted that the benefit of using such a

Here, we focused on solutions to the ASUU strike

and Consolidated University Academic Salary

Structure II (CONUASS II) in Nigerian Universities

using the optimization method. We can observe that

the present status (level) of Professors depends on

their past status (level). So, this relationship

between the current and past status is recursive. In

other words, the future status (level) depends on

today’s status (level). Hence, the solution to the

From the analysis, we obtained some interesting

with many steps it is advisable to promote

Professors at the bar to level 08. This new terminal

promotion will increase the annual salaries of

associate professors and full Professors by at least

twice their current earnings on this static

CONUASS II salary structure. Then, other levels

with values "1" will have their salaries adjusted with

hope that, they will enjoy salary doubling when they

attain the levels of 07 and 08. If this policy is

implemented, a professor at the bar will grow to

level 08 and will therefore earn up to at least double

his annual salary (N13,658,325) instead of the

current stagnating salary of (N6,020,163) per annum

at the bar. Our discussion so far is depicted by the

due to financial difficulties on the academic staff

and restore normalcy in the Nigerian University

System.

workable solution to this lingering problem that

restricts dynamic programming applications to

academic staff and the Nigerian University System.

Our focus was on the decision policy that would

help to enhance the living conditions of lecturers in

Nigerian universities, thereby averting frequent

strikes and disruption of academic activities. The

frequent strikes delay students and negatively

impact their features; hence, anything that could

stabilize university education in Nigeria will

contribute immensely to the economic growth and

stability of the country. To achieve these, we

1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 0, 0), which optimizes the academic

staff's earnings with a promotion to level 08 instead

of remaining at the bar with many steps. That is to

say that even if the government finds it hard to do a

salary review as she ought to do but implement this

recommendation, the lecturers will be happy and

discharge their duties with commitments, and this

will go a long way to addressing the perennial

strikes in the Nigerian public universities.

unrest and ASUU strikes in the Nigerian

be done to find an algorithm and codes that

could solve a large class of dynamic

programming problems, as this is a problem

Okoroji, L. I., Nwachi, C. C. and Mbachu, J.

Programming Model for Students’ Academic

Planning and Performance in the Universities.

Greener Journal of Science, Engineering and

Technological Research, Vol.12(1), (2023),

[4] Amuji, H. O., Onwuegbuchunam, D. E.,

programming model for optimal allocation of

laden containers to Nigerian seaports. Journal of

Sustainable Development of Transport and

Logistics, Vol.7(2), (2022), pp.69-79.

Approach to Sustainability, Journal of

Management and Sustainability; Vol.5(1),

(2015), pp. 1-9.

and Jieli, Z., Application Study on the

Dynamic Programming Algorithm for

Energy Management of Plug-in Hybrid

Electric Vehicles, Energies, Vol.8, (2015),

pp. 3225-3244.

[8] Doraszelski, U. and Judd, K. L., Avoiding the

Curse of Dimensionality in Dynamic

Dimensional Dynamic Programming Problems

using Deep Learning, University of

Pennsylvania, (2020).

[11] Ogbereyivwe, O. and Ogundele, S. O., On

Optimal Allocation of Crime Preventing Patrol

Team Using Dynamic Programming,

Statistics Invention, Vol. 2(8), (2014), pp. 7 –

[12] Gwang-Hyeok, C., Wonhee, L. and Tae-

wan, K., Voyage optimization using

dynamic programming with the initial

[14] Sophie, J., Laetitia, J. and El-Ghazali, T., A

multi-objective dynamic programming-

based metaheuristic to solve a biobjective

unit commitment problem using a multi-

objective decoder, Int. J. Metaheuristics,

Vol. 5(1), (2016), pp. 3 - 30.

[15] Amuji, H. O., Ugwuanyim, G. U., Ogbonna, C.

J., Iwu, H. C. and Okechukwu, B. N., The

metaheuristic to solve a biobjective unit

commitment problem using a multi-objective

Appendix

Table1. Consolidated University Academic Salary Structure II (CONUASS II)