The Academic Staff Union of Universities called off their strike
over pay and conditions, a few days to February 16, 2019 general
elections. The strike commenced on November 4, 2018 and had threatened
to run through the elections, creating an own goal for the All
Progressives Congress and the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari
into a second term in office.
The terms of the “memorandum of action”, which ASUU and the Federal
Government agreed to, was not exactly clear to the public. It was thus
not easy to say with certainty whether it would turn out to be another
stop-gap measure designed to buy off a dangerous adversary at a
sensitive time in the middle of elections, or whether, at last, a
lasting solution had been found to this intractable problem of strikes
and disruptions in Nigeria’s university education system. The main
victims of the strike; the hapless students, will now have to put up
with a forced elongation of their duration in school as is the case when
such strikes happen.
In Nigeria, it is commonplace for a student on a four year degree
programme to find himself still enrolled on the same course, two or
three additional years later than scheduled, due to enforced disruptions
of the kind just witnessed. The problem we are talking about affects
only public (taxpayer-funded) institutions, of course. Private
institutions are not affected since ASUU has no licence to operate in
them. This column’s best guess is that incessant ASUU strikes in public
universities is a major disincentive to enrolling in them and an
incentive to opt for private universities instead, where one’s
commencement and graduation days are almost set in stone.
There is no denying the fact that public universities in this
country used to rank alongside any standard university anywhere in the
world.
There was massive investment in them, coupled with the dedication
and commitment of the academics working in the institutions. The
condition of service and studying used to be so congenial that once
recruited, an academic would chart a career path for himself until
retirement without thinking too much about taking on other odd jobs to
supplement his income. We are talking of the giddy heights of public
investments in education in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. During
this period, you could walk into any of the first generation campuses
and see the array of academics and researchers from across the world,
milling around and pursuing their varied interests in science, medicine,
social science and humanities. Such were the glorious days.
Nowadays, the same institutions are now shells of their former
selves. No one takes pride in them anymore, not least, the political
class, some of whom have gone on to build rival private universities to
deplete interest and erode confidence in the public ones even further.
Those who can afford it amongst them send their children to schools in
Western countries, namely; UK, USA, Canada, Australia, etc. Others opt
for private universities in the country. As a result, public
universities in Nigeria have become production factories for half-baked
graduates and illiterates unable to justify the qualifications bestowed
on them.
You would be forgiven for thinking that it is a little bit
unpatriotic to be saying these things out loud this way. It is washing
one’s dirty linen in public as it were, except to point out that this is
an open secret. Education establishments around the world, who once had
huge respect for certificates from Nigeria’s universities now look down
on them. We would even argue that not airing this problem in a public
forum like this is both unpatriotic and a dereliction of duty. On that
note, we do not need to scratch our heads too much to understand the
puzzle in the title of this piece. In its robust defence of the strike
action, ASUU went on social media and other outlets to alert people to
the plight of university employees and institutions in this country. It
set out a litany of calamities that have befallen the public
institutions in this country over many years, due to official neglect. A
little excerpts from their dossier underline, indeed, affirm the choice
of title for this week’s column.
According to ASUU’s detailed research into the state of public
universities in this country, justifying why ASUU went on strike:
“Internet services are non-existent, or epileptic and slow in 99 per
cent of Nigerian universities”, “Nigerian universities library resources
are outdated and manually operated. Book shelves are homes to
rats/cockroaches”, “76 per cent of Nigerian universities use well as
source of water, 45 per cent use pit latrine, 67 per cent of students
use bush as toilet”, “77 per cent of Nigerian universities can be
classified as glorified primary schools. Laboratories are non-existent”,
“80 per cent of Nigerian universities are grossly under-staffed”, “78
per cent of Nigerian universities rely heavily on part-time and visiting
lecturers”, “88 per cent of Nigerian universities have under-qualified
academics”, “90 per cent of Nigerian universities are bottom-heavy,
with junior lecturers forming large chunk of the workforce?”, “only 21
per cent of Nigerian universities attract expatriate lecturers, over 80
per cent of Ghanaian universities attract same”, “89 per cent of
Nigerian universities employ their own (local ethnic) staff”, “Nigerian
university medical students train in the most dangerous environment,
some only see medical tools in books”, “80 per cent of published
journals by Nigerian academics have no visibility in the international
knowledge community”, “laundries and common rooms in many universities
have been converted into rooms where students live in open prison
style”, “over 1000 students being packed in lecture halls designed for
less than 150 students”.
The above highlights are by no means exhaustive, the tale of woes
documented by ASUU is much longer; it is stupefying in essence. If you
add the nonchalant attitude of the students to their study environment;
fiddling attendance, falsifying records and assignments, open and
blatant plagiarism, paying for lecturer’s notes (and marks in many
cases), indulgence in illicit affairs with lecturers in exchange for
marks, one can see how worthless the certificates handed to the students
at the end of their endeavours really is. Many graduates from the
universities are embarrassing for their ignorance of the most elementary
stuff like: who is the current President of Nigeria? Or, how many
states comprise the Nigerian federation? Some have been known to confuse
Tafawa Balewa (the first Prime Minister of Nigeria) for a folk singer
from the north. And Awolowo (the first Premier of the old Western
Nigeria) for a traditional ruler from some ancient village in the
Western part of Nigeria. Yes, these are products of Nigerian
universities!
What is even more embarrassing is that these illiterate products of
the universities go on to find very good, high-paying government jobs
on a fast track to senior management positions. Many also find similarly
high rewarding jobs in the private sector as well. In no time, many
even find themselves in political office, wielding power and influence.
One only has to pay a little attention to the utterances of some of the
elected representatives in State and National Assemblies to make one
think and wonder in bewilderment.
There is apparently no penalty for failure in school under our
system, as who you know counts more in life than what you actually know.
The title of your college degree matters more than its substance. Your
ability to drop names to gain access is more important than your ability
to read and write. Under the circumstances, where is the incentive for
hard work? More importantly, where is the incentive to acquire
knowledge? None, it seems. It may be time to privatise all Nigerian
universities. What do you think?
***
Written by Tayo Oke
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