[Opinion] ASUU, FG and state of Nigerian tertiary education: Before it becomes late

The Academic Staff Union Of Universities threatened to embark on nationwide strike as the federal government failed to fulfill the demands of the Union. Many people have their own opinions as how the state and condition of Nigerian tertiary education will fall into.

Below is Igboeli Arinze’s opinion.

“As one who passed through the four walls of a Nigerian University and is still passing, the state of tertiary education is indeed worrying and leaves one weary as we ponder on the future of the nation.”

“Haven witnessed the numerous number of strikes as an undergraduate in the greatest university in all Africa, (the University of Benin) spending months one should have spent engaged in academic work at home while our lecturers agitated for better working conditions as well as the provision of basic infrastructure to make teaching more meaningful to undergraduates, I wonder why the Nigerian Elite continues to play ‘ kalo kalo’ with University education.”

“Recently the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU has yet again threatened to embark on another strike following the FG’s repeated failure to meet a number of agreements reached with ASUU previously.”

READ ALSO: “You Should Beg FG To Fulfill The Agreements Between Us” – ASUU tells Nigerian Students

“While ASUU sees the employ of strikes as its resort to enhance the state of tertiary education in Nigeria, the FG on the other hand acts like an inveterate dawdler, moving only into full throttle when the threat of strikes becomes inevitable. Only then would the FG hold a marathon series of meetings with ASUU’s leadership, pose for photo-ops and engage in the drafting of another memorandum of understanding, one it much intends to violate in no short time.”

“It is common knowledge that when two elephants fight, it is the innocent grass that suffers, the Nigerian university student is like that grass. He or She comes to the academic turf with immense dreams,’four years and he should be done with his academics. How true? Such dreams are the stuff of Sugar Candy Mountains or Utopian of sorts. By the time he or she is baptized with all sorts of strikes, some lasting for as long as three to six months , four years is then extended to five and six years! As if this is not enough, these strikes rarely yield much as a visit to many Nigerian universities reveals the rot tertiary education is experiencing. Lecturers are poorly paid that they have to rely on the sale of handouts or engage in sharp practices to keep body and soul together. Others engage in moonlighting, dividing their time between their duty of engaging in teaching and academic research and a number of other activities. Little wonder why smaller nations like Rwanda and Ghana are creating academic miracles, fulfilling the manifest destinies of what a university is created for which are – teaching, academic research and the creation of new technology or its transfer. This is despite the fact that the Nigerian academia boasts of the best of academic minds all over the world and even with the many improvisations that they are forced to cope with, one marvels at how they are able to do the little they can with their situation, imagining whether there would be any limits if they are given what is their due.”

CREDIT: ALLSCHOOL, THE NATION

READ ASLO:ASUU Announces Date for Lecture-Free Day Ahead of Planned Indefinite Strike