Studying in Nigerian public universities is a journey to an unknown destination. Students commence their studies in an atmosphere of great expectations but are never told when they are likely to complete their programme of studies. It is a gamble. It is very much like someone preparing to plunge into a deep gully. When universities offer admission to students, the universities cannot tell students what might happen during the period of their studies. What would students experience? How many years would it take students to reach their destination? There are so many uncertainties.
Essentially, admission into public universities is a high risk. Previously, students rejoiced and danced in the streets when they received news of their admission into universities. That is no longer the case.
The reason for the interruptions in academic calendars of public universities is the endless conflict between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government. The bitterness has reached a crescendo. ASUU has lost the credibility and ability to threaten the government with warning strikes or full-scale strikes. A horrendous strike that lasted more than nine months sometime ago did not change the hostile situation or the government’s apathetic response to the grave conditions in which teaching, learning and research take place in universities.
Conditions in Nigerian public universities could be mistaken for a piggery. Student hostels are rotten. The situation is appalling. Research laboratories have collapsed. Libraries are almost non-existent. Nothing shocks the Federal Education Minister and the Labour and Employment Minister.
It is odd that ministers responsible for the advancement of quality university education and promotion of the welfare and wellbeing of academic staff seem to be indifferent to the conditions in the universities and the living standards of the teaching staff. Someone said higher education in Nigeria is a joke. There is nothing on the ground to dismantle that perception.
The awful situation in Nigerian universities has persisted because government officials who are expected to enhance standards have shown no concern because their children are studying in better equipped foreign universities. That is why they see no value or urgency in helping to improve the quality of university education in Nigeria.
The persistent conflict between ASUU and federal education authorities has degraded university education. Sadly, the losers are not the ministers and staff of the National Universities Commission (NUC) but innocent students and their parents who are caught in the middle of a fight they did not initiate.
Every war has rules of engagement. A conflict that has a beginning must have an end. But frequent clashes between ASUU and the Federal Government have defied all the frameworks that underpin modern conflicts. Both sides relish continual engagement in a game of hide-and-seek. It is an irresponsible game, a careless game that achieves no purpose.
When ASUU and federal officials say they are negotiating to end a strike, you can be sure there is no scintilla of honesty in the negotiation. Both sides enjoy wasting each other’s time. Threats are issued by ASUU and threats are defied by the government. The only thing we can make out of the existing tension between ASUU and the government is that none of them is interested in resolving issues that hold back the introduction of quality teaching and learning in universities. Funds that are urgently needed to improve university education are funnelled to unjustifiable projects that benefit no one but officials of state.
The long-running conflict between ASUU and the Federal Government has consumed too many resources, achieved little and undermined excellence in higher education. The endless tension has proved useless, lost sympathisers on both sides and lost value. No one is laughing anymore. Parents, students, and stakeholders in the higher education sector are dismayed, fed up and outraged that the government has not been able to allocate adequate funds to universities to enable them to carry out quality research, innovative teaching and to operate in ways that other universities in other cultures function.
After many decades of disrupted academic calendars, it is time everyone started asking important questions about public universities in Nigeria. Why do we set up higher education institutions we cannot fund or manage? Why should universities be compelled to do things in old-fashioned ways rather than invest in modern technologies and undertake regular reviews of their curriculum in order to reflect the realities of 21st century university education.
If Nigeria must operate public universities, it must be prepared to invest in the system. It must aim to maintain the required high standards that distinguish top-rated universities from second-rate universities. Everyone is tired of playing prosecutor and judge in the never-ending strain in relationship between ASUU and the government.
It is a measure of the value Nigeria places on university education when National Assembly legislators are paid staggering salaries and allowances for doing comparatively little, while universities that are tasked with education of youth are starved of basic funds just to do their job. Nigeria is a nation of pretenders. There are too many hypocrisies and contradictions that expose the wastefulness, the high level of endemic corruption, the lack of accountability and transparency in the management of public funds and in failure of government officials to demonstrate responsibility to the people they are expected to serve.
After many unsuccessful attempts, ASUU must rethink its decision to use strikes as an instrument of last resort. Previous actions did not achieve the intended objectives for which the ASUU leaders embarked on strikes. And there is no indication that future strikes would work. Increasingly, the Nigerian public now perceives strikes by university teachers as largely irresponsible, ill-advised, tactless and unproductive. Sometimes, the rationale for ASUU strikes appear flimsy.
If ASUU’s strategy of using strikes to get the government to respond to the decrepit conditions in universities has not been effective, ASUU must find more effective approaches. Those strategies must aim to enhance the quality of university education and the conditions in which students learn.
It is a shame that Nigerian public universities have fared worse in teaching and research performance than their counterparts in other parts of the world. ASUU leaders and the government must focus their attention on how to improve quality university education and end their entrenched, traditionally combative, and ineffective attitude to resolving labour disputes.
ASUU should reconsider the practice of going on strike at a time when academic and research quality development in Nigeria requires teachers to commit to higher quality of university education. We must never forget the underlying reasons that informed the establishment of public universities in the country. The universities were established to advance teaching, learning and research, and to contribute to community service. These purposes can never be achieved when ASUU and government officials adopt militant and disruptive strategies that regularly undermine the core business objectives of universities.
Frequent disruptions to academic programmes will not help university teachers and students in Nigeria to achieve higher benchmarks in teaching, learning, and research comparable to what obtains in other universities across the world. In a robust editorial on incessant strikes by ASUU leaders, The Punch argued on September 12, 2012, that: “It is perhaps only in Nigeria that professors prefer the trenches of labour unionism to the pursuit of academic excellence.”
Incessant strikes tarnish, rather than dignify, the image of public universities. A responsible government and a mature union should engage in finding solutions to serious problems that imperil university education.