It has now been more than four months since the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) downed tools in the latest bout of disagreement with the Federal Government, and in this unsightly altercation between two unwieldy elephants, it is Nigerian undergraduate students that have been trampled mercilessly underfoot like some noxious weed.
A tale of two elephants.
On the one hand is ASUU. For many of those who went through Nigeria`s desperately frustrating public schools, ASUU symbolizes a lot of these frustrations. The frequency, if not eagerness, of the Union to down tools always has often given the Union away as little more than a collection of grumpy if not greedy university lecturers who use the plight of public education in Nigeria as a cover for some vicious form of academic avarice.
On the other hand is the Federal Government, a behemoth which nurses systemic problems which have not and cannot be fixed by the fact that it periodically switches its staff and structure. If there is one thing about the Federal Government that is emblazoned more than any other thing in the psyche of ASUU and Nigerians , it is its penchant to break promises.
Backbreaking breaches
For Nigerian students, many of them young, full-blooded, and with whole lives in front of them, ASUU`s constant bickering with the Federal Government is proving immeasurably costly.
On February 14, 2022, ASUU embarked on a one-month warning strike. The issues that ground its grouses included proliferation of universities, allegations that Jamb was taking over the functions of the Senate in the Universities; non-payment of Earned Academic Allowance, issues with the revitalization fund, the discontinuation of the use of integrated Personnel Payroll Information System which it sought to be replaced with the University Transparency and Accountability System.
In 2020, ASUU went on a nine-month warning strike over the same issues. The question remains that if the Union actually went on a strike action that lasted almost an entire year over issues which have again become flash points barely two years later, why was nothing done to resolve the issues once and for all and spare Nigerian students the anguish of so much wasted time?
A cocktail of complicity.
Among Nigerian students and among many Nigerian parents who see their children languishing at home when they should be in school getting equipped for a future that is looking increasingly bleak, between ASUU and the Federal Government, there is a raging conspiracy of complacency and complicity that is silently responsible for their woes.
The prevailing impression is not exactly that the Federal Government is in bed with ASUU as much as it is that both parties appears to have weaponized their often extreme positions at the expense of Nigerian students.
Nigeria has a National Policy on Education which prescribes guidelines for the administration, management and implementation of education by government and their agencies at all levels as well as other stakeholders such as Civil Society Organizations,Non-Governmental Organization, International Development Partners, communities and private individuals.
However, with successive governments handling education with kid gloves, corruption and a lack of political will have always conspired to frustrate the maximum implementation of the National Education Policy. This has come at great costs. For example, the failure to implement the nomadic education programme has robbed the country of perhaps its most effective tool against banditry and incessant farmer-herdsmen clashes which are now asking existential questions of some of the country`s most vulnerable communities.
The shocking nonchalance with which successive governments have treated education in Nigeria has perhaps only been matched in gravity by the frequency with which ASUU has gone on strike to ground academic activities in Nigeria universities.
In 1999, ASUU embarked on a strike that lasted for five months. In 2001, it was for three months strike; in 2003, it was for six months; in 2006 it was for one week; in 2007, it was for three months; in 2008, it was for two weeks; in 2009, it was for four months; in 2016, it was for one week; in 2017,it was for one month ;in 2018, it was for three months; in 2020,it was for nine whole months even if the COVID-19 pandemic further complicated issues.
A botched journey
Education in Nigeria has become an excruciating experience. At all levels of education, especially in public schools which are what many Nigerians can afford, the conditions under which knowledge is imparted is nothing to write home about.
The Giant of Africa may never know how much of its surging national challenges are directly a result of its failure to get its priorities in education right.
However, whatever be the case, It does not appear that on the day when accounts will be given on how education went awry in Nigeria, ASUU would want its name mentioned alongside those who folded their arms while the roofs of education caved in in Nigeria.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
