Anyone looking at the jamboree-like atmosphere at the venue of the national convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abuja last weekend would have been dismayed by that atmosphere. The chaotic and riotous environment symbolised the hypocrisies, the contradictions and everything else that is wrong with Nigeria. Too many people crammed the venue and moved like ocean waves from one corner of the convention to another. There was no scintilla of orderliness or direction among people in the crowd, as accredited delegates, thugs, freeloaders and people looking to satisfy their personal interests moved aimlessly around the convention centre.
The atmosphere at the APC convention venue in Abuja did not give any indication that public universities in Nigeria are currently on strike. There was no clue that ordinary citizens have been overwhelmed by insecurity, lawlessness, indiscipline, armed robbery, abductions and ritual murders. In a country in which civil society is buffeted by economic hardships, high levels of poverty, suffering, deprivation and violent crimes, the carnival atmosphere in Abuja was not an accurate reflection of the true situation on the ground in various local communities and metropolitan centres across the country.
Nigerian political parties and their leaders have never failed to present a false and distorted image of the country. But for the disorderliness that marked the APC national convention, you would have thought that Nigeria was celebrating a landmark event or that a new President was being inaugurated. The glitzy posters, the colourful dresses, and other decorations that were lavishly showcased at the event were carefully choreographed to create the impression that everything was all right in Nigeria.
Political dishonesty is a disease. Never has Nigeria been misled, misguided, and misinformed by politicians of low moral character and integrity. These are politicians who are more committed to advancing their own personal interests than the welfare of ordinary people. One of the most absurd aspects of life in Nigeria is that, despite decades of unfulfilled promises made by the political class, the citizens have remained gullible, trustful of politicians, hopeful that their socioeconomic conditions would improve magically in the future, and believing that, through the forces of nature, all their suffering would disappear one day.
Unfortunately, that unknown future has refused to arrive because it has been blunted by political chicanery. What citizens do not know cannot exist. If there is no today, there can never be a tomorrow. Politicians promise citizens a better tomorrow, which is a strategy designed to control the people’s mindset, thoughts, emotional state and their ability to think, reason and to reach conclusions. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was correct in describing Nigeria as a country in which many people suffer and smile at the same time. What a tragedy. What a paradox.
Nigerians are their own worst enemies. They rally behind members of the same political class that has kept them perpetually impoverished. When members of that privileged class say they are determined to empower ordinary citizens, they mean they are dedicated to keeping ordinary people down, abandoned, vulnerable and dependent on the beneficent acts of the upper class.
As ambitious APC presidential candidates plot to outfox and outbid one another in the attempt to secure the votes of delegates, none of them remembers that public universities are currently shut. These same people don’t bother to discuss how to end frequent strikes by academic and non-academic staff that have disrupted teaching and research work, as well as student learning in Nigeria’s public universities.
The APC convention in Abuja was focused on political power and how to resolve uncompromising clashes of aspirations by some candidates seeking to represent the party as the presidential standard-bearer in the 2023 national election. The party’s leaders will also be looking to assuage existing anger over which region or ethnic group should present the party’s candidate at the 2023 presidential election. The ability of the party’s leaders to settle amicably the bickering over the key criteria that would be used to elect the party’s presidential candidate will, undeniably, unify or rupture the APC as a political party, going forward, before and beyond 2023.
To be clear, it is not only the APC that will have to deal with the question of how to resolve the touchy topic of determining the benchmarks to be applied in electing each party’s presidential candidate. Other political parties will have to confront that question sooner or later.
There are factors that will determine how each party settles some vaulting ambitions among its leading candidates. At the centre of that bitter tussle would be every presidential candidate’s region of origin, how many times each region has produced a President, the religious faith of each candidate and the ethnic origin of the candidate. In Nigerian politics, these issues are seen as highly sensitive. Resolving them would require clear compromises, cooperation, reciprocity, as well as clarifications about and delineation of the kind of carrots to be offered to appease an aggrieved region/ethnic group and their candidate in future elections.
Beyond the noise emanating from the APC national convention, political leaders continue to behave like the three wise monkeys that have opted to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. It will be a self-defeating or counterproductive strategy that will undermine the overriding national interest.
Pretending that a palpable problem does not exist does not mean it has gone away. Even as public university students are currently quarantined from their lecture rooms and research laboratories, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) have flagged they would commence their own strike from the midnight of last Sunday, March 27, 2022. That would complicate the already bad situation in public universities. The ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the latest strike by SSANU and NASU will unsettle academic staff and students and undermine administrative work across the public university system.
Although SSANU and NASU have called their action a “warning strike” that is planned to last two weeks, it does not differ so much from the ongoing strike by ASUU. More significantly, the strike by SSANU and NASU will not ease anxieties among undergraduate and postgraduate students in public universities. Obviously, the action by SSANU and NASU is intended to compel federal education authorities to grant university academic and non-academic staff their continuing requests.
The stage is now set for a showdown between academic and non-academic staff of public universities and the Federal Government. Going by the past pattern of behaviour by the government, we can easily predict that an apathetic government would not be bothered by ongoing strikes of any kind. The government will not act swiftly to address poor standards of teaching and learning. Similarly, the government will not be prompted to upgrade decrepit infrastructure in universities.
It is clear the Federal Government is more interested in the politics of the 2023 national elections than in taking strong action to address huge problems that hinder quality education in public universities. Given a choice between advancement of APC political interests and enhancing quality university education, everyone knows the choice the government would make. That choice, precisely, reinforces the long-held view that a country led by anti-intellectuals will always act and exhibit the key characteristics of unlettered politicians and national leaders.