Another strike looming

After eight dreary months, Nigerian lecturers who were determined to revamp the Nigerian university system have been forced back into their laboratories and classrooms, there to teach their bemused students who have surely forgotten all the lessons they had learned over the last year and more. That, in short, is the story of the just concluded ASUU strike which grounded the ship of our tertiary education for far too long. Even now, however, no single step towards the build-up of a viable tertiary education system has been taken. Another opportunity to prepare a blueprint for a viable tertiary education system has been lost irretrievably and the future of the nation appears now to be so heavily compromised that it can be said that all hope is lost, at least for another generation and when a human generation is put at thirty years, that is a very long period of time within which virtually nothing can be achieved in the Nigerian sector of academia.....KINDLY READ THE FULL STORY HERE▶

Whatever has happened over the last six months, the outcome is null. There have been two major sides talking to each other or perhaps more appropriately, at each other but unhappily, not with each other. The need for justification on both sides was so strong that that was all that mattered. The opportunity created by the situation was ruthlessly disregarded and the overblown egos of those operating under the protection of the Federal might simply roll over anything that was seen as opposition to massively entrenched government positions. Under such circumstances, both parties simply dug deeper Into their trenches and lobbed verbal grenades at each other from time to time if only so as to keep each other honest on the surface. At this point, one simply has to ask, what is the point of education, especially tertiary education in Nigeria? The answer is needed quite urgently but it will not be provided nevertheless. The manner of the interaction between ASUU and the government was, quite unfortunately openly adversarial and unproductive.

At this point in time, we should be talking in terms of where our educational institutions are heading rather than how much or how little we should be paying those that work within the university system. We have been talking about this for far too long without coming to any agreement about how much our lecturers are worth, probably because we really do not have any clear idea of what they should be doing to earn their salaries. Lecturers teach, carry out or pretend to carry out research and carry out some ill-defined public services. For these, we pay them a salary which according to them is not commensurate with the effort they put into their work. However, unless we are absolutely sure about what is expected of them, whatever they receive is pure guesswork.