Most students in public universities across the country would not forget July 1, 2013 in a hurry. It was the date the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) commenced the ongoing industrial action. What was thought to be a “mere police action” that would be addressed in days has now lingered for close to three months. It has taken the backstage as the concern of the polity is the crisis rocking the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which is far in our “national interest” than the ramblings of a couple of bearded professors and lecturers who know next to nothing about ‘the delicate art of governance’.
Since the commencement of the industrial action, there have been many calls on the lectures to return to the classroom. Among such calls, one seems to always stand out because it has become a refrain each time there is a strike. That is, ‘ASUU should devise other means, apart from strike, to compel the government to honour the 2009 agreement’. Unfortunately, the proponents of ‘other means’ have not come out with suggestions or ideas about how to engage the government to honour the agreement. There are even calls for ASUU to be proscribed.
A dangerous dimension to the strike, which I feel will not be in the nation’s interest, is its politicisation. I read some reports in the papers where some politicians were insinuating that ASUU has been infiltrated by the opposition! Can you beat that! We have a dubious penchant in this country for trivialising very serious issues. It is quite sad that avoidable industrial action is always allowed to spell further doom for our epileptic education system. More worrisome to me is the stance of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS); a body that has allowed the quest for money and power to rob it of its constitutional duties to Nigerian youths whose future is being mortgaged on a daily basis.
It is disheartening that NANS could even wait on ASUU to always declare a strike to compel the government to fund the universities. NANS, as far as I’m concerned, cares less about the products of the Nigerian universities who have been described as “half baked” “unemployable” etc by both local and foreign employers.
The association took to the streets recently in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, threatening to shut activities in the nation’s private universities if the strike by ASUU is not called off and public universities re-opened. They poured invectives on the Federal Government for failing to honour the agreement it entered into with ASUU since 2009.
Asafon Sunday, Director of Action and Mobilisation, NANS, Southwest, who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, was quoted as saying that between 2000 and 2011, the Nigerian government earned about N48.48 trillion from the sale of oil alone, against N3.10 trillion earned between 1979 and 1999. This, he said, is apart from the N5.12 trillion raked in from taxes by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in the 2012 financial year alone. The association, therefore, submitted that the excuse that the country does not have the wherewithal to fund public varsities does not hold water. Good analysis and submission. But should such submission be presented on the streets of Ado Ekiti? Don’t they know the way to the National Assembly?
They didn’t stop there. Accusing the government of being insensitivity to the plight of students in public universities, the student body concluded that swooping on private universities, where it believes the children of the elite and government officials are would drive home their point. They vowed to “mobilise and disrupt academic activities in the private universities because it is the sons and daughters of the rich that are in these schools.”
Anyone familiar with this column knows where I stand on this issue. Millions of Nigerians – me included – sympathise with NANS, the affected undergraduates, their parents and their guardians. Who, in his or her right mind, will be oblivious to their frustrations? Without mincing words, the lingering ASUU strike is a national embarrassment and a shameful burden on a nation that has carefully removed the word ‘shame’ from its lexicon.
Endless strikes in the nation’s educational system are an unfortunate development that Nigeria has started paying dearly for. However, the threat to shut down private universities, if I’m to lend my voice is ill advised from an association that has been fragmented for years and lacks the intellectual depth and comportment to champion the cause of students in Nigeria. Will shutting down these institutions solve the problems in our education sector?
Are they not aware that private universities are private business concerns? It will be illegal and indefensible to disrupt their activities. The private universities have also not broken any laws by continuing to run their academic sessions while public institutions remain under lock and key. Apparently bent on educating these student, Prof. James Makinde, President and Vice Chancellor of Babcock University, pointed out recently that the rules guiding public and private universities are different, although they both serve the same purpose. The VC put the matter in a clearer perspective when he explained that it would be ridiculous for anyone to call for the closure of private telecommunications operators such as MTN, Globacom and Airtel because the government-owned NITEL is shut.
I am aware that emotions are running wild and the anger of students in public university is based on the premise that the children of government officials attend these private schools. If, indeed, this were so, what would the student leaders do about foreign institutions to which Nigeria’s elites also send their wards? Will NANS go to the United States of America and shut down Harvard University or to Ghana to shut down University of Ghana for ‘harbouring’ elite Nigerian students?
My advice to NANS (which faction of NANS are we even talking about here) is to avoid any action that could lead to a breakdown of law and order which is bound to happen if they activate their threat. It will gladden my heart if the association first puts its house in order and look at the crisis holistically. If the body was united, there is nothing stopping them from preparing a well written position paper backed with all the facts necessary and lay siege on the national assembly to force them to deliberate on the issue. They can remain there until their demands are met. This can be done peacefully without recourse to violence because it is their constitutional right to express themselves as the constitution grants freedom of speech and lawful assembly to Nigerians.
As things stand at the moment, most Nigerians do not even know what the issues are anymore. They only would have expected that the quality education President Jonathan and some of his ministers were exposed to should help them to deal with the numerous problems that the 2009 FG/ASUU agreement seeks to address. The government seems to have lost direction over the matter. Attitude and utterances about ASUU strike suggest they have no answer to the rot that has eaten deep into our universities.
And the rot may continue as thoughts are strictly focused on 2015. Let’s not fool ourselves, honouring the 2009 FG/ASUU agreement is gradually becoming a non-issue. What is N1.3trillion in comparison to the jets at the presidential fleet? The amount politicians are now spending on political jamboree would have up graded facilities in some universities and bought hundreds of thousands of computers.
Have those in government thought about the effect of the rot on our campuses and its implication for nation building? We have a system that believes and promotes dysfunctional learning. Apart from older generation of teachers, many of the millennium lecturers in both public and private universities are products of a defective system. How and what they deliver in classes is what the system gave them. The trend is continuing and we shall soon have these millennium lecturers as professors and university administrators. One wonders what quality these ones will bring into the system. As it stands, our university education system has placed a lot of importance on academic excellence to the detriment of proper tutelage.
Don’t get me wrong; academic excellence is top priority but achieving such grades by students and not minding if the facility is in place for proper tutelage is the question here. Excellence in exam is what the government and parents use to gauge the learner and ultimately determine the failure or success of an individual. Neither the government nor the parents care to know how defective the system is. The culture of first class degree certificate at all costs is a sad reality which has resulted in the prevalence of social and political evils such as corruption, moral decadence and leadership failure. How sad.
