By By Ganiu Bamgbose, PhD
The controversies and word war surrounding the strike of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) reached its peak on Thursday when According to the country’s Education Minister, Adamu Adamu, students of Nigerian universities currently on strike should make the lecturers pay for their time wasted during the strike actions. As expressed by a professor of Mathematics and Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Professor Ezekiel Ayoola, the academic body of the country has never been this ridiculed even during military regimes. The implicit yet significant psychological implication of such instruction to students is the devaluation of the dignity of lecturers before the human beings they are meant to impart and impact their lives. Aside that these students even struggle to see academics as role models given our mostly unbefitting standards of living when compared to professionals in other fields and even entertainers, the government raised the dishonour to the peak by encouraging students to sue their lecturers, by implication their parents since we are in loco parentis.
Where does the government place the cultural value that says a child should not even raise an eyebrow to the parents? Now we are asked to be challenged by our own students. The backs of those we want better lives for are turned against us. Well, the deed is done. But even if just for posterity, we still must talk.
Maybe the students who have been asked to sue us too may want to ask themselves if anybody would willingly not want to get paid for six months. A part of this ASUU battle that is not known to many people is that if the concern of ASUU were to strictly be paid their salary, this strike would have been long over. The body is fighting that university education in Nigeria is not reduced to what obtains in many primary and secondary schools, that is if it is not so in many schools already. University students now stand to receive lectures. A department now admits as many as 400 students in some some schools. And for all of these, the government does not deserve to be sued but ASUU has to. The population of Germany is less than half of Nigeria’s yet their universities are about two times ours. The Nigerian government does not deserve to be sued for this. Germany is called the land of ideas. The country does not grow on mineral resources yet they are one of the most developed countries of the world. The government of Nigeria that is sitting on the tapped and untapped resources of the country considered itself of the moral standing to instruct students to sue their teachers.
Maybe the Nigerian government, the students instructed to sue their lecturers and the parents of the students should be informed that Nigerian academics are among the most patriotic citizens of this country. Everyone who has a PhD in this country will not apply for more than a year before getting a well-paying university in Europe to relocate too.
As a junior university lecturer, I write not less than five recommendation letters for students and other people on monthly basis. I have contemporaries in other universities of the world who have stopped talking to me because they feel I choose to waste in Nigeria. “This country doesn’t know your value”, they would say. “Your daily lessons and column would have earned you a directorate in other climes”, some of them would add. But against all odds, many of us have chosen to stay back with the hope that things will get better. But as a commendation for this patriotism, we have been denigrated to the level that those we grow and groom are now asked to call us to battle.
Even if history is cancelled as a subject in schools, posterity cannot be negotiated. Words are indestructible. Everything that has been uttered into the air remains in the air. We all shall be asked in this life and in the hereafter of our roles in the lives of others. To think that many of you killing education would have ended up in farms if you had not benefitted from free education is the sadder part of this discourse. You now rival one another with the prestige of your children’s schools outside the country. You snap with them on their Graduation Ceremonies and send us pictures at home. Be reminded, the children you choose not to care for will not let your children live well when they return. Isn’t that manifesting already? Even those kidnapping you are the people you have left hungry and jobless.
Dear students, we await our summon to court.
Ganiu Bamgbose writes from Lagos State University.
1 Comment