ASUU’s Eight- Month Strike

Every country serious about the happiness of its citizens and their future must always be seen to handle public affairs with the requisite seriousness. This is often easy to spot in how promptly such a country attends to the issues that are capable of piling costs and inconvenience on its citizens.

  Thus, all over the world, in countries where the citizens have become sophisticated enough to hold their government to account, citizens are often conscious of how the government treats the challenges that nibble at their lives. Often times, the action and the body language of those in government go a long way in shaping how citizens vote in elections. The ability to make this choice often runs to the very heart of a democracy.

  The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has finally called off its eight-month-long strike and would resume academic activities on Monday, October 17, 2022.  According to the union, it decided to call off the strike following the agreement of the government to pay off the salary arrears of its members as well as concede to some of its other demands.

 Undoubtedly, the decision was also given no little helping hand by the decision of the Court of Appeal Abuja which mandated ASUU to call off the strike as a precondition to pursuing its appeal against the judgment of the National Industrial Court which had mandated the union to call off the strike it embarked upon on February 14, 2022.

  For hapless and helpless undergraduate students who saw their academic calendars brutally disrupted in February before going on to spend eight agonizing months at home, brooding over their increasingly bleak future, the decision by ASUU to return to class is a welcome one. However, the question of the costs of the strike must be considered.

  At what cost has the disagreement between the union and the federal government kept Nigerian undergraduate students at home for eight months? Now, that academic activities are about to resume, have the problems which precipitated the strike in the first place been fully and finally settled?

  The history of the disruption of academic activities in Nigerian universities is replete with strikes by ASUU. Over the years, the cost of these regrettably frequent disruptions has increased to a level where they have become incalculable.

If the argument remains that Nigerian universities are not adequately funded and the people who staff them adequately remunerated, has anything been done in these eight moments to finally put those concerns to bed or are the parties involved merely sheathing their swords only to sharpen them and resume hostilities at a future date?

 Answering these questions are critical for the future of education in Nigeria. It is common knowledge that with the passage of years, the standard of education in Nigeria has continued to deteriorate rapidly.

 With the rot eating up many aspects of life in Nigeria also feasting on education, that most critical area has apparently fallen into ruin.

  In many ways, the sorry state of education in Nigeria remains a mortal blow because there is no doubt that for the country to be able to fix its many problems, it has to get education right. The alchemical power of education can see it prove an effective catalyst in reviving Nigeria as a country.

  It is in the interest of education in Nigeria, Nigerian students and every Nigerian child born and unborn for ASUU and the federal government to ensure that the last time the union declared a strike was on February 14, 2022.

 The circus has gone on for far too long.

Kene Obiezu,

Twitter: @kenobiezu