The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) recently met to extend its six-months-long strike which means that for the foreseeable future, Nigerian undergraduate students will remain at home, grounded by a dispute they have little input in or control over.
The strike action is not at all an isolated incident. In fact, it perfectly fits into a pattern. In what has become a ritual, every year or two years at most , academic staff in state and federal universities down tools over one dispute or the other. Whenever this happens, Nigerian students are forced to watch their academic disrupted. The cost of these strike actions and the toll it is taking on Nigerian students are incalculable to put it mildly.
Bleak days at home
These days, the average undergraduate student is a master planner. Of what use would learning and erudition be if they do not at least give one the basic tools to take charge of one`s life? Bearing this in mind, the average undergraduate student these days knows how to factor everything into immediate plans for the future. Having come to know the infinite value of time but especially its fleeting nature, everything is put to a timeline, and even a deadline.
These days, with technology making globalization a reality and connecting people all around the world, many undergraduate students predict when they would be done and dusted with school so they can move on to other things.
However, over the years, this kind of meticulous planning has always ended in heartbreak as the peculiar difficulties inherent in the Nigerian system repeatedly come to the fore.
Academic programmes that should take four years under normal circumstances end up taking twice that as different factors take their toll on the calendar.
Now, with the strike by ASUU lingering, when students stuck at home for more than six months now look, they cannot see far ahead. What they can see is a bleak future.
A dance of nakedness
The fact that ASUU is still on strike more than six months after a warning strike first caused the Association to down tools speaks volumes about the determination of the parties on either side of the disagreement to stick to their guns.
While ASUU must have its reservations about the current administration especially when it chooses to see it through the prism of past administrations and their penchant for broken promises, the government must see the union as no more than a shell for those who would paint the government black.
While ASUU would point to the government`s inability to keep several promises made to it, the government would point to the inconsistency of the Union on issues.
While these issues continue to rage, Nigerian students remain hopelessly marooned in their homes. It has been more than half of one calendar year that many of Nigeria`s brightest lights are at home.
In life, those who sit back and fold their arms while time runs down their lifespan are those who are the way they are because they have not devoted their time to studying just how invaluable time is.
That this strike action has lingered for this long shows that the priorities of the Federal Government lie elsewhere. A government worried about what wasted months could mean for the academic calendar of its premier institutions, and the psyche and future of its young people would not have allowed the strike action to commence in the first place.
However, with the 2023 general elections so close, it is obvious that priorities lie elsewhere. For ASUU, the hope is that the Union is truly invested in the quality of education Nigeria undergraduate students deserves.
For the everyday undergraduate student, the hope is that someday, they can have a country where unnecessary interruptions do not get in the way of something as vital as education.
Kene Obiezu,
Twitter: @kenobiezu
