A CRY TO ASUU! By Emecho Ted Again, I do not support indefinite strike because of its negative effects on students and other stakeholders, including lecturers. Frequent disruptions in the academic calendar compromise academic quality, frustrate students and prolong the duration of academic programmes. The social costs are immense too, for both students and their families. It is disappointing that ASUU does not consider it appropriate to conduct a thorough scientific study of the repercussions of frequent strikes on various stakeholders within and outside the university system. As academics, we are supposed to manifest an unceasing desire for knowledge and truth.Therefore, how can we, seekers and custodians of knowledge at the highest level resort to strikes ad nauseam without corroborating evidence of its overall effectiveness in improving the system? The mere fact that salaries increase after each strike does not necessarily mean that we have become better lecturers and researchers, let alone guarantee positive change in other variables that determine the quality of knowledge impartation in the universities. Let us tell ourselves the truth: funding is a serious problem militating against high standards and best practices in Nigerians universities and government is the major culprit here. However, the kind of students and lecturers in our institutions of higher learning nowadays, I submit, is a bigger problem. Many students are not in school to be educated; they just want to get certificates as soon as possible and join the rat race for primitive accumulation. On the other hand, the spirit and attitude of people joining the academic profession, especially in the last fifteen years, is a negation of what the spirit and attitude of a genuine academic should be.Of course, teaching in a university is fundamentally a vocation. Thus, anyone that chooses it must be prepared to put the quest for truth above everything else. Unfortunately, a crowd of self-centred, hypocritical, promotion-intoxicated careerists who are afraid to tell senior colleagues that run the system the plain truth, especially when the latter perform badly increasingly dominate the academia. Some of these misfits are so fanatic about strikes that they would resort to violence to prevent dissenters like me from teaching, forgetting that when everyone is thinking and acting alike, not much critical thinking is going on. I write to challenge every citizen of Nigeria that the time has come for Nigerian Student to come together under one umbrella, shunning all manners of ethnic or creed differences to protect the sanctity of our Educational system. The time has come for every single Nigerian Student to unite and say: we have had enough! But in doing so, must speak out against destruction of the university system by colleagues, lecturers and unions who continue to do the same thing every time and expect a different result each time. we should rise up and denounce all such acts as they will lead us where happiness and posterity will never go. We should come together under one umbrella, enlighten ourselves in the simplest of languages and prepare a brighter future for our generation unborn.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 18:03:02 +0000
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