Suggestion # 1. ASUU should strike STRIKES off its list of tactics.
Nigeria's higher education, despite bright spots and moments here and there, is in terrible shape. This seems to no longer require argument and is public knowledge and while government negligence is the conditioning factor, strikes by ASUU and its allied senior staff unions in the universities and polytechnics over the past couple of decades have become the public face of its failed health -- one of the major factor that reinforces and defines its increasing shabbiness. "Interminable", "predictable", "consistent" strikes have become one of the major symbols of the brokenness of our educational system, of its lack of predictability, deficit of instruction, the disfavoured condition of rigorous seminars, conferences and academic exchanges within and among our institutions and of the despair of our students and many graduates from our institutions. Some 3 or 4 generations of students only know strikes as the major marker of their passage through the "hallowed" halls of our institutions.
Strike has been ASUUs major weapon and while it has been effective, ultimately, in forcing the hands of government with respect, especially to salaries – the most public, easily identifiable and perhaps the most emotional element to the problem afflicting higher education in Nigeria, it has failed in respect to getting government to structurally reform the sector such that the institutions are sound and solid and able to produce highly skilled, innovative and creative graduates as well as produce and reproduce efficient educators and generally be able to serve as the motor for national transformation across the requisite spectrum of growth indices – from job creation to technology to democracy.
ASUU has as its declared goal the reform of Nigeria's education. Since the strike weapon applied over so many years has contributed in no small way to the downward spiral, generating and reproducing the very condition that ASUU seeks to terminate, ASUU should, it seems logical and necessary to me, decide henceforth to terminate, or at least suspend the use of the strike weapon for at least the next 20 years [i.e., about 3 - 4 generations of medical & MA+Phd students]. Predictability, regularity and certainty in the normal running of the schools from session to session, from parents to children to grandchildren, are significant factors to any attempt to rebuild into teaching the idea of "vocation" or "calling" that many commentators have been voicing on this forum.
ASUU and its leadership and its friends should and can think of innovative ways to engage the government – ways that can still be effective. ASUU should now be seen to refract its goals and its tactics through a redefined larger and longer term national interest, one that takes into consideration students and parents' immediate interest and especially the sanctity of school terms and sessions and ultimately, the integrity of the processes that can ensure the development of the nation.
Since the University of Ilorin pulled out of ASUU, it has maintained consistency and predictability unrivaled by any of the universities that operate under the ASUU banner. I cant be sure, but I thought I read somewhere that UNILORIN has one of the highest undergraduate application figures of all Nigerian universities. If this is true, it is a national vote for its predictability and consistency. While not embarking on strikes like the others has not and cannot in itself solve all the structural problems that that particular university, like other universities in Nigeria faces, the consistency and predictability of its semesters and sessions nevertheless create the possibility for effective curriculum planning; consistent engagement in planned academic exchanges, discussions, and the like within and with other institutions and it opens the door for student and staff exchanges with institutions within and outside of Nigeria and generally promotes the alignment of that school with tertiary education programs and standards that operate in the context of planned semesters across the globe.
Is there any substitute for strikes? Yes, I think there are, or there is and I believe it/they can be effective. I used to be an ASUU member and I still appreciate ASUU's past achievements, and I can testify to the sincerity and devotedness of some of its leadership that I knew then. Today, though, based on "majority" demand I want to move for a vote to suspend STRIKES as an ASUU weapon in its struggle for reform of Nigeria's education for the next little while. It has become counter productive and harms not just the cause of ASUU, but the health of Nigeria's education sector.
Femi Kolapo, Univ. of Guelph.
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