One
may want to consider a situation where due to the earth’s limited or
mismanaged resources, a group of people will actually decimate another
group of people in order to have some resources provided for the next
generation. You may wonder what sin or offence the latter group
committed, or maybe it is just a case of being in existence at the wrong
time or place. I think the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)
and the helpless millions of Nigerian students quite fit into this
analogy with ASUU being the former group. This issue is a hornet’s nest.
I refuse to catch the ‘Stockholm syndrome’ bug. A lot of ASUU members
and their apologists will tend to be subjective and not objective. Of
course, most people tend to be when their selfish interests are not
being pandered to.
As Winston Churchill famously said, “If
you are going through hell, keep going”. A total grounding of the system
is crude, barbaric and unacceptable. That is just what ASUU has done.
The Government should not be exonerated from the poor state of our
educational system as their incompetence and lackadaisical attitude is
not helping matters at all but it is obvious our education system does
not need more damage from ASUU. As poor as our education system is,
several graduates (engineers, doctors, pharmacists etc) have emerged
from them and are making their mark globally till this day. So much to
wonder about the ‘dysfunctional’ state of our education system.
A fact being inferred here is that it is
not all gloom and doom in our education system. Embarking on industrial
actions just because you want more funds from the government is utmost
egocentrism. A strong fact is that even if government allocates the
nation’s entire budget to education, it will never be enough. What
matters most is the proper management and prudent utilisation of the
resources made available to the varsities. Mismanagement, misplaced
priorities and sleaze are common in public university administration.
These institutions, lest we forget, also internally generate revenues
running into billions of naira annually. You may want to ask why ASUU is
not fighting the rot in university administration and if ASUU is
sincere, why is she not strongly advocating full university autonomy ?
That is the most sustainable model for all of our universities. I will
like ASUU members and their apologists to take a look at the list of 100
(or even 200) best universities in the world and tell us what fraction
of them are state funded. They should tell us if they are in the
majority or minority.
ASUU says it is demanding N87b for
‘allowances’. This also shows how lucrative their jobs are. The money is
just for some allowances and not salaries. Capital allocation for
education in the 2013 budget is about N72b. This is for infrastructure
at all levels of education in Nigeria. It means what ASUU is demanding
as allowances for its members exceeds what all Nigerians will benefit
from in infrastructure provision. One may wonder what sacrifice ASUU and
its members are willing to make whenever they ask students to make
sacrifices.
I understand their salaries all through
the strike period will still be paid. Non payment of their salaries for a
single day (albeit they are on strike) will lead to a declaration of
another full blown war. ASUU muddled up demands so as to paint itself in
a good light. All they really want are their endless allowances. You
can be sure there will still be another strike in the nearest future
because of an ‘allowance’.
Who else will protect ASUU’s interests
if not ASUU itself? As we all know especially in Nigeria, it is a dog
eat dog world but just as ASUU needs to fight for itself so does every
other union (or individual) also has to fight for itself. You may want
to know that all sectors of the Nigerian economy have unions. All these
fights (strikes) ultimately lead to keeping most sectors of the Nigerian
system comatose. One may want to consider the definition of
‘selfishness’ and see if it is applicable in this tactic of ‘indefinite
strike action’ especially by critical unions. There are quite a number
of such unions with the Nigerian Medical Association included. These are
unions where downing their tools means irreversible damage and loss of
lives. I don’t think the proper solution to handling such a situation is
indefinite strike. It is not news or even a secret that our top
government officials’ family members and even cohorts do not attend
Nigerian universities. So who does ASUU think is bearing the brunt and
brutality of the strikes ? I think it is the most vulnerable and the
needy in the society and I also think that is unfair and unacceptable.
There are other ways of going about the
problem of the dysfunctional Nigerian education system. As a Yoruba
adage says “bi be ori ko ni ogun ifori” translated to, “cutting off the
head is not the solution to a headache”. It is a pity that that is just
what ASUU is doing. ASUU is killing a significant amount of Nigerians
financially, physically and mentally.
There are lots of students wandering
around the country now just because their purposeful lives are being
obstructed. I know a number of my schoolmates who lost their lives as
they travelled home because of the strike. It is no news that a majority
of the roads in the country are in a deplorable state and are death
traps. The less you travel on them the better for you. With the strike,
the students need to embark on additional journeys. It is also well
known that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop. I wouldn’t delve into how
the amount of some iniquities including prostitution has surged due to
this strike. What about the spate of health problems ? A lot of the
students and their guardians experience mental problems due to the
uncertainty around the resumption. Anxiety and depression are serious
mental conditions and are common amongst them due to the strike. The
resumption uncertainty makes a lot of people lose focus on other
important aspects of their lives. To a lot of families, university
education graduation is all they wait for. Several families invest all
of their resources to achieve this especially as we are in a society
where most people are brainwashed into loving wage-slavery (this applies
globally too). All they want to do is to graduate and get a job and
start supporting their parents and siblings too. One may want to ask
ASUU how spending over seven years on a five- year programme without
having an extra semester or year is good. Does ASUU think that’s an
advantage when graduates from Nigerian public universities have to
compete with their counterparts from private or even foreign
universities ? And guess what; the world – the global village — is
shrinking more and more daily.
We all know the Nigerian education
system is quite in a shambles but so are other parts of the Nigerian
system. From health, transport, aviation, petroleum, steel to
manufacturing etc. They are all dysfunctional. This is due to bad
leadership. And this is where ASUU can play an integral part in saving
the nation. Or how come ASUU with all manner of degrees and
enlightenment amongst its members is not aware of this saying: “The
worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, he
doesn’t speak, nor participate in political events. He doesn’t know that
the cost of life, the price of beans, of the fish, of the flour, of the
rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political
decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and
swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t
know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the
abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician,…”
Nigerians will have yet again another chance to elect able leadership in
2015; maybe that opportunity would not be blown away again.
ASUU has declared war on the nation’s
education system, and in war, truth is the first casualty. It is very
unfair as ASUU is taking out its anger on the weak, defenceless and the
helpless. They should stop killing the living for the unborn.
- You can engage the writer on twitter via his handle @beeshaiban.
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