Tag: NANS

Members of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) engaged in a free-for-all-fight, last week, at the Abuja unity fountain. The fight reportedly raged between the supporters of the strike by university lecturers (ASUU) and those opposed to it. Those opposed to the strike, apparently are sympathetic to the federal government, which have been negotiating a settlement with the lecturers. On the opposite side are those who want the demands of ASUU met fully so that they can go back to their classes.

No doubt, the strike further compounds the precarious future of our undergraduates. According to Quartz Africa Weekly of January 2016, a survey puts graduate unemployment in Nigeria at 47%. It also said that Nigeria produces an estimated 500,000 graduates every year, plus those who study abroad. The survey also projected that substantial percentage of the graduates are unemployable, either because of poor quality of university education or because they did not acquire relevant skills, among other factors.

Perhaps the undergraduates were fighting to correct these troubling statistics, or could it be that they are oblivious of the challenges, or that they don’t care, or even appreciate that it is their lives that are being further messed up? Of course, holding divergent views in a free society is legitimate, and that should be encouraged. But fighting to force an opinion is inappropriate. Whichever of the opposing camps that started the fight, should be condemned.

Even though many of the fighters are beyond impressionable age, they must be told that they disgraced themselves and embarrassed their association. Members of the public who read the news see them as rabble rousers and hustlers. Those assessments may be fair, considering that as university undergraduates, they ought to conduct themselves properly and exercise restraint.

If their lecturers and the federal government are both adamant in their opposing views, their interest should be how to encourage or compel a compromise. If there are differences in strategy, it should not degenerate to a fight, unless they are saying the years of study in the university have not taught them logic and reasoning, a first year course in many disciplines. An application of logic and reasoning at a meeting could easily resolve any differences.

Unless of course, the modern NANS has become a tawdry bunch of hirelings ready to do the bidding of the highest bidder for whatever reasons – a group not much different from political thugs engaged by duplicitous political actors to force an opinion or an election. If that is the case, then the future of our country is even more precarious than what the political actors have made of it. After all, NANS represent the future elite of our country.

But could it be that politicians have infiltrated NANS, through those kinds of students who actually didn’t go to the university to study but use it to pursue their dubious agenda? That would be a tragedy. But the greater tragedy is that majority who are in the university to study, allow the duplicitous minority to dictate their pace and their future. I have no doubt that majority of the students are determined and focused, yet it is not what the fight in Abuja depicted.

In more developed democracies, and that is similar to what happened during the first republic, there are student activists who are sympathetic to different political ideologies, and their sympathy helps to build the feeder team for more stable political associations. If the ongoing dispute between the federal government and ASUU were based on ideological differences, while that will not excuse an open fight, by their supporters, it could at least explain divisions within the NANS ranks.

What NANS displayed in Abuja last week, was akin to Fela’s Ojuelegba. Fela sang of the famous road intersection, where you had traffic coming from several directions and leaving even the traffic warden, not to talk of the pedestrian, spinning in absolute confusion. For those who may have been compromised to orchestrate the confusion, instead of a quick resolution of the crisis, their gain to cause the mayhem will be only transient. A few morsel of fish here and there.

If the students want to get involved in the politics of our country, they should go for the meaty angle. I have argued here that while the previous governments at federal and state levels were making a mess of higher education, the students can mobilize to vote out those who after sending their children to study abroad, treat education in Nigeria with utter disdain. Unfortunately, despite high hopes in the many governments across the country, not much has changed.

Some state governments which do not have the resources to own universities create them to massage political egos, after which they leave them to wobble and fumble going further. In many instances, governors pay scant regards to the laws establishing the universities, in the appointment and sacking of management staff, and they also impose excessive junior staffs and students on them. Underfunded and overburdened, many state universities run like the old molue of Lagos.

The solution to the challenges lies in increase in budgetary allocation to education and of course curbing the Nigeria nightmare, corruption. With three to five per cent budgetary allocation for education at all levels, there is no doubt that our universities are grossly underfunded. My argument elsewhere that to fully fund education, we must urgently increase our productivity, to generate more money, was countered with the argument that even with what is available, our country can devote more resources to education.

Perhaps that is correct considering the obnoxious waste associated with public officials most of whom live beyond the resources due to them. But corruption, mismanagement and misapplication of national resources at state and federal levels, also applies to university managements. Most vice chancellors and their principal officials treat the scarce resources of the university as they would treat their private estates.

To add to the bedlam is the prevailing confusion over the autonomy of universities, and in some cases that enhances corrupt practices. To make matters worse, some pro-chancellors and chairmen of university councils also seek to corner the scarce resources, through dubious contracts and excessive privileges. In fact, many of the universities have several uncompleted projects, even as each succeeding management and intervention fund, engage in new projects, in much uncoordinated manner.

The university teachers, many of whom have been reduced to paupers, instead of concentrating on improving their learning and research, and their ability to impact their students, resort to all manner of tricks to survive. Some of them, in other to gain attention from the politicians who have seized even the academic space, resort to racketeering academic laurels and privileges.

So, while some universities give unworthy persons, their honorary awards, some sell their degrees. All that impact on the value system of the students, and what happened last week in Abuja is a sad manifestation.