--ASUU declares "indefinite strike", I read in Punch. Tell the students this and their parents as well and they'll tell you that a "total" and 'indefinite" strike has been on, not only since the beginning of this year or for most of last year, but for more than two decades!!
Both sides, the government and ASUU, have most irresponsibly boxed themselves into a corner at the expense of the students, their parents, and the nation.
You don't use your weapon of last resort unless you are sure it will knock out the opponent and work the miracle you desire.
Unfortunately, the only target group that has been totally knocked down and out are the innocent, hapless students, a generation of Nigerian youth, and the increasingly brittle structure of Nigeria's higher education. The long-term damage done to the national psyche is colossal, by the current reckoning, and the probable social and economic impact – in including criminality – would likely be even worse.
Continued intransigence on both sides can only worsen what is already bad and shows a demonstrable lack of understanding of the catastrophe that the current situation already is. Proscribing ASUU is no less than a retrogression from whatever claim to democracy the nation has earned.
The ASUU/Government discussions and negotiations should not have been boxing or wrestling matches. They must never be a zero sum game. You must create and enlarge spaces for negotiation. Your strategy must enclose opportunities for further discussion and most protect spaces for bargain. Both sides should continue to think of discussions with structures that ensure that its stick, weapon of last resort, remains a threat - for the sake of the students and the health of the nation's education they both claim to champion.
A threat is an effective threat only when it remains a treat. Once you deploy your threat and it fails, it loses its potency as a threat. All else is empty posturing. The government has done its worse, including with its ongoing no work no pay policy, over the years without being able to stop ASUU strikes. ASUU has been more on strike than in class over the past two decades without been able effect change in the nature of the government. It takes a different type of national governance structure and culture to get ASUU all its lofty demands for the nation's education. The demands on both sides should be structured and tiered and timed in such a manner that a minimum number of weeks of instruction is ensured each year.
If over a 20-year period, the tools, methods, and systems deployed to solve a problem have not worked or are now producing more destruction than good, then it is time to revise the tools. Nigeria's case is not special in this regard, and it can be done.
It is ethically, morally, indefensible on the part of ASUU and the government that this strike continues. It is equally wrong for government to even contemplate proscribing ASUU by undemocratic fiat. Both sides having deployed their weapon of last resort to no effect, they do need help. This help should come from the CITIZENs.
One thing I strongly feel, as a citizen and a parent with wards currently trapped in the Nigerian university crisis, it would be irresponsible to allow this to go on further. A citizen's group that includes strong representations from the students and from parents should intervene, first to cancel the zero-sum demands of both sides and to establish new parameters for reengaging with the demands for the reform of the education sector as well as with the constraints that are inevitably part of it.
Both sides need new thinking. Our country and the youth need renewed and responsible attention to be paid to them. They have not had this for a while. Not since I was myself a youth.
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