The ASUU Strike of 2022 is raising important questions and responses we must not dodge. Market reforms now demand Vice Chancellors should raise tens of billions of naira annually to fund their universities. Otherwise they are not fit for purpose. Really? Are Vice Chancellors to blame for the government’s ancient failures in education policy and practice? Thus, it is a question worth examining.
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The Final Target
“Nigeria needs its public research universities and teaching hospitals despite the plans of the government. It’s a non-negotiable necessity.”
How true is it that the private sector can run universities better than the public sector? A classic globalisation policy, only the World Bank and the IMF could successfully impose such a policy on Nigeria. The Government of Nigeria (GON) seeks to abolish public university education in Nigeria completely. That is the tacit intention of the GON, not make-believe reform. Free-markets for education are profit driven and with consequences. Must education be expensive in a country that cannot adequately employ its educated people? Or pay them living wages? It is neither value for money nor does it make economic sense. (more…)
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The Second Target
“The neglect of a child is abuse; a nation’s neglect of its youth is wilful filicide.”
The other target of the Government of Nigeria that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is striking over is the fate and future of students in tertiary education. ASUU with vehemence detests and protests a few things. (1) The gross over-population classes they teach in dated small lecture theatres. Venues where students sit in windows, on steps, on the floor or even listen to from outside. (more…)
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The First Target
The continuing romance of the Government of Nigeria (GON) with globalisation is ever demanding of the immiseration of the country. Globalisation has done nothing good for Nigeria and Nigerians, other than in strange abstract terms. One-size-fits-all globalisation policies always end up favouring the few and failing everyone else. The Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) is a one-size-fits-all policy instrument and does not fit with university systems. Rather, it targets university staff. (more…)
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The Unexpected
“Often your most visible adversary is the least dangerous.”
The Nigerian youth as an unintended consequence, see the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Strike 2022 as the Government of Nigeria (GON) spitting and shitting all over them with contempt. When the ASUU goes on strike, academic and non-academic staff feel the pain, but the youth and students feel it much more in the present climate of “nothing nothing” to look forward to. “Nothing Nothing” – no money, nourishment, jobs, accommodation, fulfill-able aspirations respectability, or hope. The youth sense it as repression and oppression. The GON were not expecting such a development, it came as a surprise. (more…)
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The Provocation
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and their colleagues Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) are not accepting globalisation straitjackets that leave them so worse off they become redundant to academia, to society and to themselves. You cannot do that to the most intelligent professionals in the country and get away with it. Well, you can try.
Nevertheless, the unwitting provocateur of the coming crapious revolution is the Government of Nigeria (GON) itself. Since the 1980s, the GON have found ever new ways to undermine working people by gradually decreasing their pay and benefits or even sacking them en masse. The private sector does the same, even rich oil companies. We know it as globalisation. (more…)
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The What?
“Revolution is believed in only after it has been accomplished.” – Book of Changes, Hexagram 49
Strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in Nigeria is a regular occurrence. Since 1999, ASUU has been on strike for a total of 63 months (or 5 years). So, Nigerians take or overlook it as one of those things; “It will end in a few months,” they say. Not this time. The five-month-old ASUU Strike 2022 is shaping up as a shock-disaster for the Government of Nigeria (GON). The support of the strike by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is not good news for the GON. The conditions for the never imagined crapious revolution have arrived in Nigeria for some time and the ASUU Strike is the probable flash point. (more…)