Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Further on the ASUU fiasco

it is necessary that ASUU hears, embraces, and even programatically utilizes dissent from within, but also, and very importantly, criticisms from without. Nobody else can point out your weaknesses better than those, who in relation to you, are outsiders, enemies, competitors or consider themselves victims of your actions, inactions and mis-actions. It is impossible to improve on anything without bringing our present best achievements under scrutiny to see where improvements can still be made.  We speak different languages and speak those languages differently. A competent and progressive organization will be able to untangle the significant points conveyed whatever language or style used by the critic.

It cannot be wrong to ask ASUU to recast its recurrent strategy and tactics. that does not deny the usefulness and successes it had achieved in the past. it places those successes in the light of the present and shows that the best of yesterday often needs to be improved upon to meet the changing needs of today.

it is counterproductive on the part of ASUU or any of us its supporters to only work with a conception that only seems to  always pit that body against the government as its opposition at every instance of disagreement. It makes for too much inflexibility in dealing with important ad urgent issues. There is much to gain with complementary or alternative methods from time to time in which ASUU positions itself as partner with government. It is necessary most time, especially given the terrible state of our education, and, for instance, given the complexity of the various interests at stake during a strike, that ASUU complements its strategy with three-way and even four way approach that effectually includes the student body and NATION as autonomous interested parties in the issues of higher education reform and  management. Such binary ASUU vs government focus in current use tramples on the interests and wellbeing of the large majority of other constituencies within the nation that ASUU believes its actions are meant to serve, who however perceive their interests differently than ASUU.

where dissent is muzzled and different thinking and variety are stifled, stagnation will set in.   full accountability almost always includes external vetting - by knowledgeable people who at arms length are less likely to be compromised and are better able to include interests and perspectives to which self-interest would otherwise have been partial or  blind. This is the service that the likes of Ikhide and Moses are performing here.

Those among us who have had the opportunity to experience different educational systems, having worked or taught in the Nigerian university system in the recent past and in university systems elsewhere outside Nigeria cannot deny the fact of many of Ikhide's and Moses' points.  They know without any doubt that  Nigerian university administration, staff and faculty need to embrace and implement as much change within and among themselves as they justifiably demand of the government.

I salute the Ikhides and Moses and others who continue to forcefully face us with the reality that our best has faded and needs re-polishing. They are doing us a great service. May their tribes increase and  live forever.  However, its needless to say that they too should be willing to take as much as they give. Those who have issues with the language of the criticism, even if the critic feels that such particular style is required to get his/her point across, also have a point and it cannot be take that away from them. If it is justifiable to critique others, it is equally justifiable that the critic and his or her critique be subject to critique.

femi kolapo

 

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From: "Ikhide" <xokigbo@yahoo.com>
To: "Toyin Falola" <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2013 7:41:28 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Further on the ASUU fiasco

 

I want to thank everyone (seriously) who took time out to respond to my rant on ASUU. Some of the responses were insightful and engaging, but the vast majority were highly predictable and highly amusing. This is all we do, react to stuff, we are hardly ever proactive. When pushed we offer half-assed anemic solutions to issues. There is something wrong with us. You are men, African men, you were born and raised to give lectures, to walk around the place giving bs directives, God help anyone who tries to hold you accountable. I am not coming back to Africa, "to give back", whatever the hell that means. I have nothing to "give back" but my verbal rocks and stones for the criminal acts you perpetuate against children daily whose crime is that they are not your children. If your child is too good to be in your classroom, then you are a hypocrite. I don't much care for legislated relationships but when the courts in America legislated forced integration in the classrooms, the more affluent whites were forced to look at classrooms and make them fit for use by all - white and black kids. A community's progress springs from enlightened self-interest. I work for a school system, all my kids have attended or are attending the public schools. It is the expectation here that leaders must walk the talk. Do not give me sermons if your child is not in these hovels called universities.

 

I stand by everything I have said: ASUU has failed our children. ASUU is a huge part of our problem. The decay in our universities did not start yesterday. We could already see the rot by the 70's. We do not invest in a maintenance culture and the chickens have come home to roost. Part of the problem is a lack of transparency. There is no data to work with, when you ask for the data, you are berated and ignored. The Nigerian people deserve to know basic information about their schools. What does it cost to run the university of Ibadan annually? Operating Budget? Capital Budget? Broken down as discretely as possible? What is the cost per student? What are the revenue sources? You can't plan until you have all the data.  If anyone knows of how to get this information, I'd be a very happy curmudgeon. For years now, a group of us have been asking the Edo State Ministry of Education basic data about education funding. The responses [or non-responses] would please VS Naipaul and the late Graham Greene. If you don't believe me, here, go to the "data and statistics" section of the Edo State Government's "Ministry of Secondary, Technical and Tertiary Education." An entire state has not ONE piece of data to give to her taxpayers/citizens. You want their "list of schools"? Right here, click! and watch your mouse laugh.  I mean, how difficult can it be to provide a simple list of schools? And oh, by the way, there is a "Frequently Asked Questions section. Click on it and laugh. That is our Nigerian government for you: All sizzle and no suya!

 

In any case, is there anyone here that truly believes that Nigeria does not know what to do with respect to her educational system? Is there anyone here that does not know the sad fact that all the analysis has been done, enh?  Many solutions have been offered, nearly all of them ignored. The Federal government should for instance get out of the business of running universities and stick with a regulatory role. Hand over the federa; universities to the states along with a generous block grant and say bye to headaches.

 

There is nothing new that has not been said. Let me remind you.

 

1. All ASUU wants is give me, give me, give me. WHAT are you going to do with the money, structurally? You can't find anything coherent in their various scrolls. You have to get at these things structurally. Why is the Federal government still in the business of building schools, especially universities? Why not just divest yourself of these institutions, give them back to the states, along with substantial block grants for re-building these chicken coops? A lot of these universities were built in the colonial era and during the cold war. A lingering dysfunction - a culture of entitlement and privilege still pervades the thinking in the building of new universities. There is no new thinking, people just build and build looming disasters. I say, disband ASUU at the federal level and keep all union activism at the local level.

 

2. Transparency. You cannot plan without data. There is absolutely no excuse for the lack of data. How can you sell your vision without data? Again, there are two components of an annual budget - the operating budget (salaries, supplies & materials, equipment, consultancy, etc) and the capital budget (bricks and mortars, etc.). The operating budget for educational institutions is typically about 90% salaries, because they are service oriented, so that is not my issue. Nigeria clearly needs a massive infusion of funds into the capital program to rescue these universities. Some of them may need to be torn down based on this shoddily done but informative "needs assessment" that I found on ASUU's website.

 

3. ASUU's communications strategy/PR stinks, stinks, stinks. That organization is still living in the 20th century.  ASUU needs to wean itself of gerontocracy and patriarchy. They also need to find a structural way to include student voices in their work and advocacy. They are missing out on one free tool - social media. You can yell at me all you want, but ASUU is not going to be successful with its current way of doing things. I cannot over-emphasize this: ASUU needs to get its act together, put together professional talking points, wrap a good PR strategy around it, clean up its disgraceful website, get really active on Facebook and Twitter. In other words, ASUU needs a charm offensive, using a one-page text: What are the issues? Why do they matter? What do we want? How do we get there? What is the vision. And ASUU badly needs a good writer, that shouldn't be a problem, many writers are members of ASUU.

 

4. ASUU has been held hostage by the tired thinking of yesterday held passionately by apostles of gerontocracy and patriarchy who obviously still run the place. Nobody uses the slide rule anymore, get some new fighting tools, you are losing battle after battle after battle. Use the young among you, get more females into your leadership and give them substantive authority.

 

Finally, I don't really begrudge people refusing to allow their own kids into their classrooms, you must do what you need to do to save your kids. It is the hypocrisy that is galling. People of means have squirrelled their loved ones abroad (Ghana and the West) while they babble bs at the dispossessed. If your kids are in the same school as those of the poor we wouldn't be having this conversation. Y'all can yell at me all you want, no shaking. I will keep telling you what you don't want to hear. Until you do the right thing for the children of the poor.

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide

Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

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