The recurrent crisis, bedeviling Nigeria’s university system has reared its ugly head once again. The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has embarked on a week’s warning strike, to press home their demands for better remuneration and improved academic environment. This is a prelude to full blown industrial action to compel government to implement agreement it reached with lecturers years ago.
Announcing the one-week strike, which has since paralysed academic activities in public universities across the country, ASUU National President, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, explained that the union was constrained to withdraw its services over due to the Federal Government failure to implement the 2009 Agreement and 2013 MoU.
According ASUU: “Many aspects of the 2013 MoU and the 2009 Agreement with the Federal Government have either been unimplemented or despairingly handled. The agreements are: Payments of staff entitlements since December 2015, funding of universities for revitalisation, pension, TSA and university autonomy and renegotiation of 2009 Agreement.’’
Obviously, ASUU has demonstrated good faith in being patient this long. It is worrisome that Nigerian government is fond of entering agreements it never intends to implement.
It is not just ASUU but government has been notoriously consistent in breaking covenant with virtually all trade unions in the country, including Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, ASUP, Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU), Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT, Nigerian Medical Association, National Association of Resident Doctors, NARD, The Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Trade Union Congress, TUC, among several others. In fact, it has become a cyclic movement of one day, one crisis, as the nation dabbles from one trade dispute to another, no thanks to government insincerity or duplicity. It would not come as a surprise that soon after this current tiff with ASUU is resolved; another springs up through another trade union.
Why would government sign agreement it does not intend to honour or that it knows would be difficult to implement? It has nobody to blame for its lack of good experts in trade dispute resolutions or sending neophyte negotiators to represent it. If it was not plainly fraudulent, it must honour agreements entered on its behalf.
Unfortunately, the present government is bad customer to trust to implement such old agreements, especially in view the country’s current parlous economic state. I don’t see much coming out this impasse unless ASUU intends to worsen the plight of students in whom they have invested so much.
It is necessary, therefore, to urge caution on both sides. ASUU should show more consideration. The nation is solidly behind the lecturers, as everyone appreciates the copious sacrifices they had made already. Running out of patience at this point of recession would cost ASUU public goodwill, as people will now view them as insensitive. Government on its part should meet the lecturers at some level and explain the circumstances and further appeal to their conscience, with concrete assurances and nip the looming bigger strike in the bud.
As is customary with the present government, it will not do to blame past administrations because government is a continuum. He who inherits assets should be ready to take up the liabilities as well. Or quit for that past government to come back and sort out its own mess?
Strikes distort academic calendar. Students now enroll in school without idea of actual duration of course. This increases the burden on poor parents, as a four-year course could drag for upwards of six years or more. Consequent upon this, many students drop out of school when their sponsors can no longer bear the burden. Out of frustration, they now take recourse to crime and social deviancy like prostitution, kidnapping, robbery and cultism.
Even those that manage to graduate come out empty, as they might easily have forgotten the knowledge acquired during years of interrupted academic activities. There is no better way to produce academically deficient graduates than the continued fostering of uncertainties in the system.
There is no way the nation can produce good brains to take up challenges of the 21st century with the inclement environment of Nigerian universities. It is the hostile atmosphere that breeds cultism, an evil that now straddles the universities with reckless bravado. This has sucked in many students, a social vice, which some exasperated lecturers have been known to become part and parcel of.
The unwary may be in a hurry to condemn ASUU for its incessant strike actions. In fairness to ASUU, the strikes arise from government breach of trust. Moreover, the lecturers are not just fighting for their selfish interest alone but also for the restoration of the entire academic system, which has been rotten overtime due to palpable neglect. ASUU wants to salvage a system that has not performed to its peak because of avoidable constraints placed on it by those in authority. This has resulted in brain drain of most of its best hands to offshore universities. Some of those managing to work under the strain have strayed into unwholesome activities, trading marks for sex and making wicked demands from students, who should choose either to comply or be failed, thus giving the academia a bad name.  Government has to address the rot in the system. It may not be able to address everything in one fell swoop but steps it takes now would show how committed it is to arresting the slide to infamy of the Nigerian university system.
The effect of the indeterminate academic agenda as a result of ceaseless crises is felt in the quality if products the system produces – half baked unemployable youth. That is why there is mass unemployment. That is why Nigerian degrees are the butt of scorn overseas. That is why you have graduates who cannot express themselves even in kindergarten language. That is why our youths are prone to crime and anti-social conduct.  Our universities certainly need adequate funding. Research should also be encouraged and lecturers should be worth their hire to be able to deliver on their mandate without recourse to unwholesome practices.
Nevertheless, ASUU should consider that the so-called leaders are less concerned because their children and wards are nowhere near Nigerian universities. They are nesting comfortably in foreign universities at the expense of our looted commonwealth, irrespective of whether $1 exchanges for N1000. Invariably, it is the poor that feel the pinch of the intractable ASUU strikes.

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