On October 22, 2019, I wrote a metaphorical essay in which I said Nigeria’s higher education system, like a gravely sick child, was on a death bed and on a life-support machine. Everyone but the government fought to save the life of that terminally ill child. After decades of being abandoned by various governments, the condition of that sick child remained critical. That sick child symbolised and still represents Nigeria’s public universities in which academic activities have been severely disrupted for the past seven months.
Academic activities have deteriorated in Nigeria’s public universities since February 14, 2022, when members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) walked off lecture rooms and research laboratories. And with that disagreement between ASUU and the Federal Government crawling past the seventh month, there is no indication that the dispute would be resolved soon. In fact, the government has taken the quarrel with ASUU to the industrial court. That legal angle can only guarantee one outcome: prolonged closure of public universities.
It is looking more and more likely, indeed worrying, that public universities might end the year without returning to any form of academic activity. Never in the history of Nigeria have national leaders shown total disregard for the poor quality of public university education in the country. How can Federal Government officials retire to sleep every night unconcerned or undisturbed by the scandal that erupted in the universities nearly more than seven months ago? Do we have responsible national leaders? Do we have concerned parents and responsible education stakeholders? Do we still have strong labour unions that once held obstinate government officials to account over abdication of their national responsibilities?
In every country that I have been privileged to visit, education is granted priority attention at primary, secondary school and university levels. In Nigeria, however, no one seems to care whether public universities remain open or closed indefinitely. No one cares about the likely impact of a protracted industrial relations conflict on the quality of teaching, research, and learning in universities. No one cares about the impact of the closure of public universities on the consciousness of undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as their readiness or unpreparedness to return to their studies whenever the strike is call off.
Is there any point in encouraging students to seek admission to universities with no dedicated and focused academic calendar? Is there a need for public universities to persuade prospective students to apply for admission into their programmes while the universities cannot guarantee when academic studies would resume, and students have no idea when the academic year would commence or end? A university without a specified programme of activities observed, recognised, respected and upheld is nothing but a breeding ground for swindling of innocent students.
In modern Nigeria, scamming comes in various ways. One of the processes through which public university students are regularly scammed is by luring them to apply for admission after which the students are abandoned even before the academic year has commenced. The Federal Government and Nigeria’s public universities have failed to demonstrate their duty of care toward undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Universities that have regularly failed to commit to any sustained programme of studies have no business advertising for admission of students into their various programmes.
Civil society has reached a point of despair over the inability of the Federal Government and ASUU to end a strike that has since become traumatic for students and their parents. The entire country is politically deluded now. Nigeria is currently covered up by the smokescreen of excitement caused by election campaign marches, music, dancing and rhetoric. While all these are going on, no one remembers that politics without education is like preparing omelette without breaking eggs.
How can a country that once held a widely admired global reputation in higher education teaching and research suddenly lose it all because of criminal disregard for falling standards in university education? Where does our priority lie as a nation? What is the future of university education in Nigeria? This question has been avoided by higher education administrators on the misleading assumption that public concerns would soon disappear and everyone would return to a life of business-as-usual.
Concerned citizens who attempted to intervene in the dispute between ASUU and the Federal Government made the point unequivocally that it is the responsibility of the government to provide adequate financial support and infrastructure to public universities. ASUU has always maintained that the government must support public universities through enhancement of existing infrastructure, as well as significant increases in the salaries and allowances of university teachers. Both sides remain uncompromising.
Anyone who has observed how financial resources are invested in worthless projects or wasted through corrupt means must wonder why the government has found it excruciatingly difficult to increase the salaries and allowances of university teachers and to provide the necessary structures or facilities that will stimulate teaching and research. These and other issues not listed here are at the core of the longstanding dispute between ASUU officials and government representatives.
It is ironic that, while ASUU and the government agree that standards at Nigeria’s public universities have plummeted and must be addressed, both sides remain stubborn in their views about the best way to save public universities that have remained in a state of coma for decades.
There is something bizarre in a system in which the government establishes, owns and controls universities but cannot provide sufficient funding, as well as science and technology equipment to maintain or enhance quality education.
A question that has persisted over the years is: Why has the Federal Government, as the general overseer of public universities, been reluctant to tackle the challenges that confront higher education institutions in Nigeria? The government is fully aware of its obligations but has abdicated its responsibilities.
This suggests that, when Nigerian youth are forced into unintended life of crimes owing to the unresolvable industrial dispute between the Federal Government and ASUU leaders, the consequences can be cataclysmic and long-term.
Against this background, we must laugh rather than weep whenever a senior government official sheds tears over the poor ranking of Nigerian universities among influential universities in Africa. How could a government that showed apathy to proper funding of public universities expect to see a Nigerian public university among the top 10 research-led and teaching institutions in Africa? Nigerian universities cannot achieve the society’s expectations because the government has not invested valuable or meaningful resources to uplift standards at the universities.
To improve quality of education offered by public universities, the government must realise one fact. The university environment is like a farmer and their commitment to their farmland. What the government sows is what the government would reap. The government cannot starve public universities of funds and critical equipment and library facilities and still expect the graduates of public universities to compete favourably with graduates of other leading African universities. History will not judge the government sympathetically.
The government’s lack of interest in resolving the unending strike in public universities is a joke taken too far.