Tuesday last week marked exactly 100 days that the Academic Staff Union of
Universities (ASUU) began an indefinite strike that has shut down all the public
universities in our dear country, Nigeria.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no headway in the negotiations to resolve the
crisis, going by the rhetoric of the zonal coordinator, Benin zone of ASUU, Dr.
Ighalo Sunny. While noting that the union appreciates the interest shown by
various stakeholders in the crisis, he said, rather ominously:
“But that will not stop us from finding lasting solution to the decay in our
education sector. So, even if it takes us another 10 years, we will remain at
home until the right thing is done.”
Instructively, the Federal Government believes it has already done enough to make
ASUU call off its strike. In the course of his media chat on the eve of the country’s
53rd Independence anniversary two weeks ago, President Goodluck Jonathan
indeed alleged that politics had crept into ASUU’s industrial action.
The President noted that he does not control the resources of the states and
wondered why lecturers in state universities are also on strike over a matter that
had to do with demands on the federal government.
While there may be no statistical measure of the cumulative damage done to the
system in the course of the current ASUU strike that is now in its fourth month, it is
evident that education, the bedrock of any society, has become a huge joke in our
country. Incessant industrial actions have combined with inadequate attention to
damage, almost beyond repairs, our institutions of higher learning.
Strike actions are sometimes justified by the fact that government officials, both at
state and federal levels, have acquired a reputation for responding to issues only
when they have assumed crisis proportions.
The present ASUU strike, for instance, shows no marked shift from tradition. The
union and the government agreed on certain terms by arbitration, through the
Gamaliel Onosode Panel, as far back as 2009. One of the major demands of the
university teachers, besides the issue of emoluments, was the need for increased
sectoral allocation to education in the annual budget to meet the minimum
standard as enunciated by UNESCO.
The frustrating state of implementation of the agreements freely entered into, as
well as the resort to strike, was aptly captured by ASUU President, Dr Nasir Fagge,
when he said: “If we fold our arms, the system would die anyway. So, it is better to
do something. It is because we have been going on strike intermittently that we
have a system in the country”.
While the lecturers may have a point, it is also a fact that they are fast losing
credibility in the eyes of several Nigerians. In the present trade dispute, as we had
occasion to point out recently, ASUU is putting premium on personnel entitlements
and welfare issues.
Yet the union has rarely been heard in demanding performance from its members
as part of the contract with the nation. Even when we hold government
accountable for the current state of the educational system, ASUU has not done
itself any favour by its constant recourse to the strike option at the slightest
excuse.
It is also clear that most of the university lecturers, especially the very active ASUU
members and officials, do not improve themselves intellectually as serious
scholars.
It is therefore no surprise that no university in Nigeria is ranked among the world’s
first 500. Even within the continent, the dismal performance of our universities is
better appreciated by the large number of Nigerians trooping to neighbouring
countries within the West African sub-region to earn degrees.
There is an urgent need to resolve the current crisis, so that our public universities
can reopen and students go back to the classrooms.
Every day they are shut out of school exposes them to the danger of ultimately not
being useful to themselves and to the larger society. While ASUU remains adamant
with reference to the agreement under dispute, the rot it is also nurturing by virtue
of incessant strikes should also not be lost on the lecturers.
PLEASE HELP US SHARE THIS ARTICLE
About the Author
0Awesome Comments!