Friday 30 December 2011

ASUU AND THE STUDENTS PREDICAMENT


On the 5th of this month the Academic Staff Union of Universities embarked on a nationwide ‘total, comprehensive and indefinite strike’ that will in essence paralyse the activities of most universities in the federation with Ahmadu Bello University at the heart of it.
The essence of the strike bordered on saving the university system from collapse and institutionalising global standard practices of knowledge. As the ASUU president emphasized ‘the development of the universities to be internationally competitive could no longer be delayed’.
With this as the yardstick, it will be imperative to note that the strike is in fact an avenue to delay the actual development of the universities. It is crystal clear that embarking on an indefinite strike will in no way accelerate the developmental process but will in all retard it.
It is indeed sickening to realise that the best university in Nigeria is not among the first 6000 in the world. This goes a long way in showing the aura of neglect of the educational system by the government.
Therefore it is high time the Federal Government goes back to the drawing board and rescue us the innocent students to whom all the ill-effect of the prolongation of this strike shall compound.
It is total mobocracy that the minister of education is pleading with students to understand the predicament of the government. What predicament is there to understand apart from our current predicament of wilderness with nothing to fall upon and if our predicament, the student predicament is not understood, then hitherto, the threat by the hierarchy student union NANS to occupy the Federal Ministry of Education headquarters might in essence materialise.
Education is and will always remain a vital instrument for sustainable development and therefore should be sustained at all cost for the betterment of the nation as a whole because without bright future generation, a greater Nigeria shall never manifest.