The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is in a dilemma. As potentates of learning, they are supposed to elevate humanity from poverty to prosperity. This it will do, by applying knowledge to the challenges of life, whether the mundane or the esoteric. In a new world, driven by knowledge, members of ASUU should be revered egg-heads, who churn out innovations, ideas and dreams to aid the nation’s march to greatness.
But alas, ASUU has become an object of ridicule. The latest of its strikes instead of evoking sympathy and sense of urgency has become a subject of derision, even amongst the educated. The challenge facing the union is compounded by the absence of a knowledge-driven economy and an egalitarian social environment, revolving on the cusp of learning. Where it elsewhere, where education is very productive in innovations and social capital, perhaps ASUU can throw its weight around and hope to gain attention.
But of what valuable stock is a professorial chair in a country, where the most valuable office in the land is constitutionally open for grabs by any person who merely passed through a secondary education? If you want to be a president, governor or senator, all you needed to have is a secondary school certificate. You don’t even need to have passed in flying colour. Just that you attempted the examination.
ASUU also fails to realize that you don’t need to be innovative to gain the other requirement of attaining a high office in the country they operate in. That other requirement is having train-load of money, whether by hook or crook. As a matter of fact, if the kind of innovation you have is knowledge-driven, then you are likely to end up poorer. Take for instance writing a good book. Unless you are a member of ASUU who can force students to patronize it, where is the reading public to buy the book? Indeed, if the book is good, it will be pirated without consequences by the other types of innovators.
Even more challenging for ASUU is that there are few innovations from the universities in Nigeria to make their output a hot brand. Recently, Bill Gates was promoting innovative toilets from China. He lamented that more than two billion people defecate in the open and bayed the grave consequences on the health of our children. He poignantly linked water and sanitation to good health. Of course, a large chunk of Nigerians defecate in the open, some on tarred roads, like the tanker and trailer drivers who now live in their trucks parked on the road to the nations ports in Apapa and Tin Can, in Lagos.
Yet, it is China which has improved tremendously in water, sanitation and health management that is coming up with such a quality innovation, apparently for third world countries like ASUU’s Nigeria. Whether because of the absence of research funding or of innovative academicians, the Nigerian universities are not hot-beds of innovations. If the universities are not centres of innovation and are not churning out potential innovators from its faculties, how can the lowly educated policy formulators that are occupying high offices in government take ASUU serious when they are making demands for quality education?
With low quality products, how can ASUU hope to sell its services at a premium? So when the children are back home because of ASUU’s strike, what most parents are worried about is the economics of their stay, not the missed potentials from impotent universities. If their wards can gain the degree staying at home, many parents won’t complain. They will wonder, whether there is much difference staying in school or at home; since either way, they end up with relatively poor quality education, at graduation?
Unfortunately, since there are very few high tech jobs that require quality university education in our dear country, there are no serious measures for the quality of university education that many possess. So in the market world, a degree is a degree, regardless of quality. To get by, it is not the quality that matters. In most cases, it is who you know. Indeed, after years of university study, many end up doing what requires mere standard secondary education.
Regrettably, what is needed to work in the federal or state civil service is a certificate, not quality, and students can acquire that, with the on and off academic sessions that ASUU’s many strikes accommodate. So when ASUU goes on strike, neither the students nor their parents will organize a march to compel a resolution of the dispute. The few high tech jobs or really good jobs are taken over by foreign trained students, most of whom are the children of the high and mighty in the society, some of whom got their high positions or successes without much education.
Of note, members of ASUU suffer double jeopardy since most of their children attend Nigerian universities. With their children also victims, they end up breeding successors of struggling children and students. This is so, since they cannot afford to train their children abroad, and with the strike-tainted education they are not qualified for the high-end dream jobs. Of course, the challenges faced by the students in the university leads to a limited success in life, which further dis-incentivise university education in the country.
As academicians, ASUU knows the need for incentives, after all that is what they are primarily striking for. Perhaps it is time to ask themselves whether their resort to strike provides enough incentive to compel government to listen to their cries for better funding of universities. Without any doubt, this writer believes that Nigerian universities are grossly underfunded, and unless there is a paradigm shift, the country will continue to lag behind in all indices of life. Obviously, until we produce the critical number with quality education to drive the national development, we will continue to run in circles.
Whether in medicine, engineering or arts, Nigeria has large pools of very educated citizens living in diaspora, who are helping their countries of residence make giant strides in science, economy and arts. Yet, Nigeria has not solved basic needs, like food, shelter and electricity, even as her population is exponentially racing to become one of the three most populated countries in the world in few years. Even scarier is that while we have not solved basic health challenges like malaria, money guzzling health issues like cancer are already at our door step.
So, even while government can afford to ride roughshod over ASUU’s demands unlike how it deals with NLC and its affiliates, especially NUPENG; our dear country is paying and will continue to pay huge price for the poor quality of university education in the country. Even those who train abroad, comes home to suffer the general assault from poor education.