For every day Nigerian students remain marooned in their homes, rooted to a spot by the ongoing strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), a country, cruelly afflicted by infernal infections, must count its losses and lick its wounds. In the same vein, it must also curse its lock.
In February, ASUU downed tools in what has actually become an annual occurrence. One day swiftly became two and then thirty and hen over ninety and counting with ASUU intransigently digging in its heels to show that it meant business, and to send a message both to the government and students all over the country. The messages so far received by Nigerian students from both sides involved in the deadlock have been mixed.
For the Nigerian government, it has been the usual spin about negotiations with ASUU and phantom commitments. The governments spin doctors have been besides themselves to show that while the Government has been overflowing with commitment to meet ASUUs demands and resolve the lingering impasse, ASUU has been a rather difficult customer, showing an unreasonable hand in pressing home its demands.
However, Nigerians know where the buck eventually stops. Nigerians also know that blame and excuses are favourites in failure`s harem.
The travails of education in Nigeria, of which the lingering ASUU Strike is only as much a symptom as the level of intellectual darkness in the country, did not start with the current administration. However, the current government has gleefully continued what has been a scandalous tradition of failure.
Because it appears that in Nigeria, those who are uneducated, or barely educated, are more versed in the art of violence especially the type which brings home political power, many of those in public office privately deride the importance of education, while publicly doing nothing beyond the perfunctory to elevate this preeminent tool of nation- building to its proper status.
But in all these, where is the National Association of Nigerian Students and other student bodies whose militant postures sent chills down the spines of even the most repressive military regimes in the days when Nigeria sought to extricate its democratic soul from the iron claws of autocracy?
It appears that like a fierce fever, silence has gripped the association and all those who should speak out about the situation of students in Nigeria. With the right words deserting them and stuttering taking over when the strongest words should issue, education in Nigeria teeters on the brink of collapse.
These days, mercenaries are planted by politicians in students- and youths-led organizations to suppress activities they consider hostile. It is therefore no surprise that under the leadership of slimy politicians masquerading as students, many of these associations have lost their voices, with their increasingly brittle spines leaving Nigerian students on the brink.
When recently some students decided to protest in Oyo and Ondo States, the Nigerian Army which appears to be fighting a losing battle against terrorists in the Northwest and Northeast indulged the distraction of sending its men to disrupt the protests and disperse the protesting students.
Deceptively, what may seem apparent to the naked eye is that the situation that has kept Nigerian undergraduate students at home is coming from the straight fight between ASUU and the government. But those who strain to look just a bit farther would see that at the bottom of the ravine redolent with senselessness, selfishness and no little stupidity, the future of Nigerian students gradually drowns.
It is heinously selfish some of those who by now would probably have died of illiteracy or illiteracy induced mistakes were it not for the solid foundation provided them by public schools in Nigeria now mercilessly midwife the demise of the same public schools they benefited from in classic examples of biting the fingers that fed them.
Whether ASUUs lack of rigorous rectitude has contributed to the nonchalance with which Nigerian authorities treat the Union or not, Nigerian undergraduate students are exasperated at being endlessly stuck at home while those responsible for their travails fritter away Nigerias resources.
They want to return to school and to the hope that at least something will give in their journey to an increasingly bleak future.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
