"Describing as unfortunate the decision of the President of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Yinka Gbadebo, to dissociate itself from ASUU's strike, Ayan said the action was least expected from a body the academic union was trying to protect."
The ASUU leadership appears genuinely surprised that NANS and Nigerian students have turned against the union whereas any keen observer of ASUU's struggle over the years would know that this day would come, given the lack of creativity and novelty in ASUU's organizational toolkit. And it's not just students that ASUU has lost; it's also parents, uncles, siblings and guardians of those students. It's also regular folks who have no dog in the fight but who can see clearly that the routine of striking every three or four years, with students spending months at home, is detrimental to both learning and societal wellbeing. And yet ASUU leaders pretend to be surprised that their own students have had enough.
Well, that's what happens when you live in a self-created bubble and only listen to narratives that you've crafted for internal and external audiences. When you live in such a discursive world, you cannot realize that, if overused, a tactic becomes redundant and counterproductive, even if it yields some modest gain in the short term. Are those gains worth the long term damage the tactic inflicts on the user's image? When you're cocooned in your insulated discursive world, you also do not realize that your tactic actually hurts the folks (students) that the tactic is meant "to protect," to use the words of the ASUU official quoted above. When a tactic becomes part of the problem, it is time for a radical rethink. All of this critique is for the necessary post-strike stocktaking and self-critique as the ongoing action has to be resolved for the sake of our students.
A telling, if grammatically challenged, facebook comment on Jibrin's article by a former student recounting his experience at UNN. These instructional and quality issues will always intrude into ASUU's discourse, discrediting its message. The earlier the unio confronted this problem frontally the better for its image and perception in the public square.Greatson Sunday Ukoh Thank you sir!!!
Our graduate are of truth most of half baked, because of the university system of administration. I still remember some lecturer whose course can only be credited with a minimum of #5000 of which one(mt111 and 112) openly put forth that no lady would pass his course. With facts, ladies were booking hotels with all necessities for him to sleep with them for a credi while men paid of which I made E8s simply because if refused. Should I talk about my Gs 1 and Gs 2 lecturer who gave a D7 at first semester because I didn't by her book for the current semester and gave an A which I sure know would have also been in the first semester's, only when I bought the Gs2.
Which of these will I speak of, my witnesses are in my friend lists.
The maths lecturer only got a suspension of not up to a month and was called back of which he continued. I speak of UNN.
ASUU haven't lecturers that dish out to the standard performance of the student and are asking for increase in wage.
I am even far better at teaching English language than my Gs lecturer!--
On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 1:07 AM, Jibrin Ibrahim <jibo72@gmail.com> wrote:--
Conversation with my ASUU Comrades – II
Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy Column, Daily Trust, 21st October 2013
In my column last week, I called for a broader strategy by ASUU including taking the National Assembly more seriously as an Institution that can help meet some of their demands. In his response, Mohammed Husain wrote on my Facebook wall that: "Had the ANC, followed such an advice to follow through its case in South African parliament; apartheid would still be firmly in place. So let us eagerly await the writer's strategy to achieve ASUUs noble objectives through the oil baron cabal executive and Farouk Lawal archetypal corrupt-ridden parliament! Incredibly amazing how this brilliant writer's analysis is made in a vacuum of the decaying character of the state at this point in time. A 'conversation' for piece meal concessions, he says. I say *lols* to that." This type of attitude is unhelpful because all governmental institutions are corrupt so why try to negotiate with the Presidency, are they cleaner. To come back to his example, the South African transition occurred precisely because there was a leadership that was ready to negotiate and compromise rather than fight it to the end, Nelson Mandela and Frederik de Klerk.
The attitude of the Presidency is also unhelpful because they are now engaged in a concerted effort to stampede ASUU to surrender. The rent a crowd show in which women were paid to parade as market women demonstrating against ASUU is despicable and can only worsen the faceoff. In addition, the leadership of ASUU is being harassed by security agencies. The fact of the matter is that ASUU is suffering from reputational erosion and government is trying to ride on that to give the organisation a fatal blow. Precisely because of this delicate situation, ASUU needs to think out side its "normal" box that the answer is always an interminable strike. ASUU must start addressing the root causes of its reputational decline.
Over the past two decades, the compulsory sale of handouts to students by some lecturers and the sexual harassment of female students have become constant topics for musical lyrics and beer parlour jokes. More importantly, there is a significant part of university professors whose promotion has been on the basis of self publication rather than peer review and many professors in Nigerian universities today have not got a single peer reviewed journal publication in their CV. This means that we have a growing percentage of fake professors in our universities who cannot stand up and get respect among their peers in the international context. ASUU demands to receive remuneration of international standards without a struggle to ensure that the quality of their members is also international can only lead to increased reputational erosion.
I followed with keen interest the debate spearheaded by Okey Ideduru on Toyin Falola's "USA-Africa Dialogue listserve. During his sabbatical in Nigeria, he had participated in six NUC accreditation panels and was shocked to find out that universities routinely recruit mercenary professors uniquely for the accreditation exercise. Okey had started the debated by challenging the common and pervasive but fraudulent practices that the NUC's Quality Assurance Department has to contend with is the use of "academic mercenaries" by universities during accreditation exercises. Programmes that have been staffed for 3-4 years by an army of full and part-time assistant lecturers would suddenly list full-time and/or part-time associate professors/readers and full professors in order to meet the NUC staffing mix requirements. The worst culprits he says are the private religious universities.
Okey also challenged the propriety of the common practice of demanding upfront monetary payment from prospective authors by supposedly peer-reviewed academic journals. He expressed his surprise at the virtual absence of policies or discussions about quality assurance regarding scholarship outputs in the university system. According to him most of the scholars he met had never heard of Google Scholar, and its citation counts for every published journal article, including those published IN NIGERIA, let alone other (sometimes controversial) measures of quality, such as Web of Science/Word of Learning and Pearson's annual reports of "Impact Factor" of journals and academic publishers.
Most Nigerian scholars therefore do not live in the world of the international academy where peer review matters and are the basis of assessment. Of course Nigerian universities still have some scholars that are respected internationally but they are now a tiny minority. As Okey put it "it should worry us that an academic that boasts 50-100 "professional papers" cannot equally boast of ONE citation count on Google Scholar! … More than than 90 percent of the CVs I reviewed listed as publication outlets "Volume 1, Number 1" or Departmental journals or self-published books or books whose publishers' names and addresses are more innocuous and lesser known than the remotest streets in Ajegunle, Lagos or Ekeonunwa Street, Owerri. I concede that "writing for themselves" is not unique to Nigeria, but most scholars elsewhere don't engage in this kind of massive inflation of output that is clearly indefensible."
Should the Nigerian Government decide today to grant all the financial demands of ASUU, our universities will continue to be outside to top 1000 universities in the world because of the internal rot that has destroyed them from within. ASUU has to get real and start addressing these internal problems so that we will know that the struggle is not just about money but also about having real universities in the country. There has been an incredible expansion of universities without a commensurate expansion of quality staff. We have therefore been expanding mediocrity in the university system. Most universities have a majority of junior faculty as staff and most of the few senior faculties are of doubtful quality. This means that there is no academic leadership. One of the revelations in Okey Iheduru's write up is about a household name in Political Science who has become notorious for serving as SUPERVISOR to several PhD candidates in more than SIX universities at the same time! His mass-produced protégés have the appellation of "Pure Water PhDs."
ASUU must become more comprehensive in its struggle and attack not only the neglect by government but also the rot within the university system. It must place on its agenda the importance of rigorous external review of portfolios for promotion to professorships. It must challenge its members who moonlight simultaneously in numerous universities where everybody knows they are paid to satisfy NUC and not to perform. ASUU must challenge many of its members who award marks to their students without reading the scripts because they have too many to mark or do not give a damn.
My ASUU comrades can only demand for justice if they come to equity with clean hands. We all know that our development objectives cannot be met without building a solid educational infrastructure for the country. To do this however requires serious internal reform. One aspect of the ASUU struggle that was won was that of academic freedom. The universities now appoint the Vice Chancellors without external interference from the Presidency. All my conversations with my comrades in the universities however tell me that the expectation that the quality of academic leadership will improve with the application of this principle has proved completely false. Professors with dubious academic qualifications have been winning the struggle to be vice chancellors. There is massive evidence of systematic plagiarism and as more academic leadership falls to the category of those with doubtful credentials, the real battle to save the universities is lost from within.
I completely agree with ASUU that the Nigerian State must significantly increase its support to higher education. However, this support can only bear fruit if ASUU itself, as the major player within the system, broadens its struggle to address issues of quality and standards within the system. Interminable strikes cannot in and of themselves constitute the solution. Indeed, ASUU stands the risk of deepening its reputational erosion and singing the dirge song of the university system in tandem with the Presidency.
Ire
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There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
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