Still On ASUU Strike

It was interesting seeing
members of the Market Women Association  of Nigeria (MWAN) stage a peaceful protest in Abuja last Monday, over the lingering strike action embarked upon by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
It really shows that women are becoming  more aware of their important  role of bringing about desired changes in the society.  Many women in history had contributed in many ways to the transformation of the society, and today’s Nigerian women should not be mere bench-warming spectators while things continue to go wrong in the country. As the saying goes, “A house does not burn and fill the eyes with sleep”. Despite some insinuations that the market women’s protest was politically motivated, it was heart-warming to see women take a definite stand on such a national nightmare as ASUU strike. In the words of the national coordinator of the rally, Hajia Ladi Suleiman,  “We took to the streets because ASUU has refused to have the face of human. We are stakeholders because we are mothers. They should resolve this thing between them and government so that our children can go back to school”.
Indeed, no mother will be happy waking up every morning and seeing her child/children who ought to be in school  wasting away at home. The emotional, psychological and economic effect of such situation is unimaginable. Worse still, when it seems that the malady will continue for many months as the two parties involved have refused to shift grounds.
However, in as much as one supports the appeal that the almost four month old strike be called off so as to reduce the sufferings of the people, some pertinent questions must be asked: Isn’t better for us to undergo this suffering if that would bring about a more viable, strong university system? Shouldn’t the strike be encouraged to go on if that  would lead to better funding of education in the country?
Education sector remains the engine room of national development. No country had attained enviable height economically and technologically without adequate funds for the education sector. A situation where books, laboratory equipment in most University libraries and laboratories are outdated, students hang on windows to study, take lecture notes and write examinations, there are either none or poor hostel accommodations, lecturers hardly receive research grants, does not paint a picture of a country which is serious about achieving the vision 20:2026 of being among the 20 leading economies.
Sadly, while Nigerian government had largely pre-occupied itself with entering into agreement with ASUU without honouring them, many other African countries are getting it right. Ghana has repositioned their education sector and we are all pushing our children there.
Each time we keep complaining of the poor quality of graduates produced from Nigerian universities, without remembering that these graduates were not properly groomed. Many of them spent half of their school years at home due to one ASUU strike or the other.
A few days ago, the Kano State Coordinator of the National Youth Service Corps, (NYSC), Mr Sanusi Abdulrasheed revealed that about 89 per cent of corps members in the country can neither write good application letters nor communicate effectively in English language .
And the situation will definitely not get better unless we start taking education serious. The solution does not lie with establishing more universities when we cannot maintain the existing ones. Why make more children if you cannot take care of those you already have? Enough money should be budgeted for improving schools and universities. Improved wages for university lecturers and other genuine demands of ASUU should be considered.
I think it is also high time universities made proper use of other funds given to them. We are aware that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), the Petroleum Development Trust Fund (PDTF), external grants from foreign donors, endowments from private sector organisations, government’s special grants are some of the sources of funding for the universities, not forgetting school fees and other fees paid by students and other people who enjoy services provided by the universities. Would our universities be in their current pitiable state if these funds were properly managed?
So, we cannot expect things, to be better except the Federal government, university authorities and lecturers who are primary enforcers in the tertiary education system show more commitment towards the reviving of the education sector. It is high time the political class stopped paying lip service to the education sector, bearing in mind that any nation with poor or lopsided education system cannot expect to make any meaningful growth and development in future, no matter the high level of natural or human resources it may be endowed with.
The time to lay a solid foundation for the younger generation is now and if the on-going ASUU strike will helping achieving that, so be it.

Calista Ezeaku