Opinion
Incessant Strike And Fate Of Education
Oliver Okpala
The spate of strike actions and labour disputes in our universities, polytechnics and other institutions of higher learning has reached an alarming proportion. These days, labour disputes appear to be the order of the day in our citadels of learning spread across the country. The frequency and regularity of these industrial actions has had negative impact on the tertiary institutions. It has also sent dangerous signals within and outside our shores about our universities and polytechnics.
It has become necessary to make an incursion into labour unrest in our institutions of higher learning. Currently, several unions in our tertiary institutions are involved in a face off with their employers over many burning issues. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) are interlocked in a war of attrition with their employers. Their grievances range from non-payment of salaries, allowances, entitlements to non-provision of research grants and an enabling environment for learning in the citadels.
It is to be expected that in an environment of intellectual endeavour, there must be decorum and decency. Anything short of these values will impact negatively and dangerously on the business of learning and character moulding which are the primary purposes of our higher institutions.
Industrial instability and squabbles do not make our higher institutions the appropriate and cognate centres of learning and excellence which they ought to typify. On the contrary, industrial actions distract lectures, the school calendar and pro• grammes, and throw the students into confusion. Academic activities are disturbed, while programmes are abandoned. The students are thus unable to undergo the training, learning and lectures scheduled for the session.
The result is obvious. The tertiary institutions eventually turn out students and graduates who did not properly undertake and undergo the prograrnmes and studies designed for their courses. This gives way to the production of half baked graduates who lack self-confidence and courage, and who cannot compete favourably with their counterparts from other climes.
Strike actions should be a weapon of the last resort by labour. It should not be the primary objective of labour to confront their employers. No worthwhile benefit comes from an industrial crisis. It is with dialogue the stakeholders are able to reason together and embark upon a cross-fertilisation of ideas which will move our higher institutions forward.
It is conceded that a labourer deserves his wages. ASUU and NASU members deserve to be paid for work done. But these bodies must realize that they should limit their demands on the various governments to the financial abilities of the governments.
To demand from the government what she cannot afford is to open the floodgate to disharmony and strife in the institutions of higher learning.
ASUU and NASU must appreciate the existence of the global meltdown. Nigeria is not an island. She is part and parcel of what has become a global village. Our nation is not immune to the adversities of the meltdown. The demands of labour should be in line with the present economic reality. The arms of the government must not be tied by ASUU and NASU.
Again, Government has a very wide obligation. The obligations are to Nigerians as a whole. Government has the runs to provide infrastructural facilities for Nigerians. Our roads need maintenance, our hospitals need drugs, standard of living must be improved, our airports need to be upgraded to ensure safety and we have our international obligations as well.
ASUU and NASU are not the only stakeholders in the Nigerian project. Indeed, all Nigerians are stakeholders. No group, body or organisation should arrogate to itself any claim to special privileges and no organisation should hold the country down or to ransom simply because of some group interests. The nation must come first in everything we do. This is what the re-branding project encapsulates.
ASUU and NASU should understand that their strike actions often entail closure of our higher institutions with its attendant consequences. Students roam the streets. They remain idle and they fall into various temptations. Some of them resort to the new fad of kidnapping, either to make ends meet or occupy themselves. The daring among them go into armed robbery. Yet, others resort to all sorts of crime and deviant conduct because of their idleness.
Our undergraduates are our future leaders and our future hope. Since a lot is invested in their training, a lot is expected from them. ASUU and NASU must not cut this national dream short. The two bodies operate in a very sensitive and delicate environment and they should not allow their actions and inactions to jeopardise the interest of the nation.
The billions of naira which the government pumps into institutions of higher learning must not be allowed to go down the drain. Nigerians owe this country the duty to be patriotic and to think of the next generation.
Unrestrained strike actions in the citadels expose our country to ridicule internationally. It puts a question mark on the quality of our graduates. A strike action is not a weapon in the hands of labour to dare government. It is an instrument of last resort. It is when extensive and exhaustive dialogue has failed that the option of a strike action can come in.
As a matter of fact, in sensitive institutions as our universities and polytechnics, a strike action should be completely ruled out. It amounts to sabotage for NASU and ASUU to continuously distort our educational programmes in the citadels by calling out their members on strike. There should be a stop to this practice.
Okpala wrote from Lagos
Quote:”Communities have rights to peace, safety, and quality of life. Noise pollution, crowds, or other impacts from religious activities can affect these rights. Balancing these interests requires consideration and dialogue”.
“All work and no play”, its said, “makes Jack a dull boy.” Despite this age-long maxim that recognises the role of play in early childhood development, play appears to be eluding many Nigerian kids. The deprivation of play opportunities comes in different forms for the Nigerian child depending on family’s social setting or status, but the effect is much the same. For children in Nigerian poor families, life is becoming as much a hassle as it is for their struggling parents. Due to harsh economic conditions, many families resort to engaging their kids prematurely in trading activities especially in hawking, to help boost family revenues, when these kids should be enjoying leisure after school. Some of these children barely attend schools while being forced to spend much of their childhood hustling in the streets. For children from well-off families, time could be as crunchy as it is for their busy parents when, obsessed with setting agenda for the future of their kids, parents arrange stringent educational regiment too early for their kids.
These group of children are made to get-off the bed by 5.30am every weekday, get ready for private school buses that call at 6.00am, otherwise report by however means to school at 7.20am.The situation is worse for kids in the city of Lagos where the need to beat urban traffic rush-hours is very high. Most children are further subjected to extra hours of lessons after school at 2.00pm, only to be released with loads of homework. On many occasions children who leave home for school at 6.30am get back by 3.30pm. With hardly enough time to eat, do school assignments and take afternoon naps, these children hardly had time for plays before dinners. In Nigeria, kids of ages between 3 and 12 spend averages of 9 hours a day and 45 hours a week to and from schools, and additional hours doing home assignments and domestic jobs, whereas their peers in developed countries spend about half that duration and have more time for leisure.
Any remaining spare time left after school work or street hustle is further stolen, when kids who usually are fascinated by gadgets, are exposed to household electronics like phones, tablets and gaming consoles. Electronic games may create a sense of leisure, but the difference with human interactions is that kids doing games interface mostly with machines or with programme structured in ways that entrap a child’s pysch directionally, according to the game’s programming, in ways that may not encourage independent thinking. Moreso, attraction to such gadgets displaces kids’ attention from important television and radio programmes. The prevalent tight, academic schedules for some Nigerian kids, though intended for academic excellence, encroaches on childhood leisure time needed to achieve an all-round childhood development, and could make children to resent formal education altogether. Besides, academic excellence or economic pursuit, is not all there is to living a well-nurtured life.
Children’s leisure time, defined as time left over after sleeping, eating, personal hygiene and attending school or day-care, is very crucial to childhood development. Sociologists recommend that children should have at least 40 per ceny of the day as leisure. According to Berry Brazelton, a former pediatrician at Harvard Medical School, “Play is the most powerful way a child explores the world and learns about him or herself.” Unstructured play encourages independent thinking and allows the young to negotiate their relationships with their peers, and in the process build self-confidence and self-control. Play is one of the important ways in which young children gain essential knowledge and skills. Leisure time enhances learning as fun enables children to learn at their own level and pace. Young children naturally explore and learn many skills by making cognitive connections from events that catch their attention.
Unstructured plays help children developed their cognitive, physical and communication skills that make them acquire social qualities necessary in navigating relationships in adult life. Plays enable children assess how others feel and learn perspectives as well as empathy through observing differences in facial expressions, body language and even tone of voice, which helps them copy how to express themselves to others, and therefore develop socially acceptable behavours that build relationships. In cooperative activities, children willingly take things in turn and may delegate roles. Children can also share the glory of winnings through competitive games, which is all great for working together in task sharing. Aside encouraging parents to ensure adequate leisure time for their kids at home, schools should make plays and exercises an integral part of the educational curriculum. The educational curriculum set by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) includes specific training durations and break periods, as well as sporting activities, as part of the school system.
Due to poor government funding, sports in public schools have declined, while most private schools lack sporting infrastructure or even play grounds. These make recreational activities and sports implementation almost impossible in schools. Also, the increasing rate of urbanisation in Nigerian communities is gradually eroding ancient playgrounds, while established urban centres have lost community playgrounds. With tightening apartment spaces now being the norm in most urban residential areas, many kids are forced to wriggle within burglary-proof enclosures. Nigerian governments and the relevant agencies should ensure that existing child labour protection laws, educational and urban development codes are implemented in the country, to enable proper nurturing of children as the future stakeholders of our society. Private schools, especially, should be supervised to ensure they follow the educational curriculum standards set by NERDC.
In a bid to impress parents and draw more patronage as better option than public schools, private schools, most of whom operate in cramped environments, have continued to set high regiments of training schedules beyond the capacity of most kids, and even encourage enrollment of pre-school age kids who can not sit still to listen for an extended periods of time. Schools, from creche to secondary levels, without playgrounds and recreational facilities should not be allowed to operate, and should be made to understand and implement appropriate curriculum and training durations. Many Nigerian kids, whether from rich or poor families, appear to have been set-up inadvertently, in the same leisure denial that affects their parents. All work and no play could lead to some messed-up kids who grow up not understanding social cues, and being unemotional and self-centered, manifest later as obsessive-compulsive adults.
By: Joseph Nwankwo
We thank God who is above all human contrivance and arrogance. Congratulations, Your Excellency Amaopusenibo Sir Siminalayi Joseph Fubara. Your victory takes us back to the Bible as a living document of a God that rules in the affairs of all His creation. In a manner of speaking, welcome back from your first war with Phillistines, Your Excellency! Yes, first example is David and Goliath! And like David, Your Excellency stands over Goliath in victory. But that is not enough. Our real enemy is that Your Excellency is Governor of a State with a wretched economy. Indigenes of Your State are today reduced to battalions of beggars waiting for who will hire their loyalty on the usual “pay-as-you-go” basis.
Your Excellency, it brings us to another Bible- based parallel. Conscientious Rivers indigenes above 50, should identify with and commit our all to this second parallel. It is to liberate the economy and people of Rivers people from 23 years enslavement and poverty, for us to regain our dignity and pride. When the economy of Egypt was drifting into a disaster zone, even Pharaoh did not know it. He also did not know what to do. But God sent a Joseph to build the economy into a fortress of good fortune that overcame the economic and social disaster Egypt did not know was ahead. Your Excellency for 23 years, Rivers State has been ruled without any logical, credible and consistent PLAN of how to overcome mass poverty from our dehydrated local economies.
Your Excellency, Rivers State cannot survive one month without Federal allocation! So called IGR only about 10 per cent of Federal allocation.It is also not based on what we produce but on tax from other people’s productivity that pass through our State. Pharaoh did not know what to do in the case of Egypt. May it please God to position another Joseph in Governor Siminalayi Joseph Fubara to heal Rivers State and build an economy that all Africa will come to access in order to chart a new course out of worsening economic hardship that is caused by near zero investment in productivity and endemic reckless looting. They are the twin chambers nursing a corporate cancer unfolding across Nigeria and Africa. The hard work begins today, Your Excellency.
We need an economic blueprint that will enrich every Rivers senatorial district from investment to grow productivity and to enrich every Rivers person from career-based productive labour, just as Pharaoh was enriched by Joseph’s economic Blueprint. Let Rivers State stop the trend of waiting the lives of young Rivers people recruited by Phillistines into cultism, thuggery and easy money, as a career. These Phillistines believe they have only lost one phase of many legal battles and battles by other means. But from comments in the public media, their eyes are fixed on 4-years of war and more! Your Excellency, we the people will not let you forget what you owe us. We have to make unbelievers see that your leadership is different and that we are uprooting the old order of an unproductive Feudal System. That system makes a few persons and their cronies to monopolise our collective wealth, while the majority are left in misery. Let’s put an end to enslavement by cabals and mass poverty in Rivers State. That is when the Phillistines will surrender.
By: Amaopusenibo Brown