Two Elephants and Battered Grasses

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The latest episode in the Academic Staff Union of Universities-Federal Government of Nigeria brouhaha, if previously comic, now suggests a tragic end. It is saddening, as it is, that what was thought to be the last phase of ASUU-FG seesaw and a solution to the imbroglio has generated mixed feelings in places where there should be celebrations. The development is this disturbing: the largely aggrieved, unmotivated, impoverished, troubled academics are asked to go back to work by the country’s industrial court on what the academics have yet found to be another set of disagreeable conditions. This may mean that the strike will end in the same manners in which it started: with accusations and unresolved issues.

Ordinarily, the court ruling would not have been a point of concern but for the probable coming to effect of this Yoruba proverb; èèyàn lè fipá mú ẹṣin rodò ni, èèyàn ò le fipá fún lómi mu – one can only force the horse to the river but one cannot force it to drink its water. The thrust of this proverb is that what should be done at will and with goodwill cannot be obtained by force. Thus, it brings to fore the implications of the ruling of the industrial court on the over seven-month and ongoing ASUU strike. The implications of the ruling coming to effect are many but none dire than those that affect students. Here is the focus of this writing.

The feared implications come from the view that it is a win-lose situation – FG’s win, ASUU’s partial loss and students’ total loss. Of course, this is a subjective view. It is a win for the government and its agents. It is a win for persons who are either sympathetic towards the government or those who are so tired they are ready to welcome any alternative but the elongation of the strike. For others, it is a loss. In this category, you have ASUU lecturers, students, and a score and one member of the public. For them, the sense of loss originates from multiple sources and the least of them is not pleasing.

Of the latter, two sets are primary; the ASUU lecturers and the students. But of these two, the students are a set that feels more the throes of the latest episode of the ugly affair. For any lecturer, to have lost to the government (if they do) means that the economic hardship of the strike will go without amelioration. This, however, does not mean that the Union cannot exert vengeance on the government later. “How?” and “When?” are the questions with predictable answers. But for students, times are lost for life, opportunities fade without redemption, as graduation remains a function of undefined x years.

If anything, over the decades, this is one constant thing about ASUU strike: no matter how and when the Union goes on industrial strike action, students pay irreparably. You cannot successfully tell how nor can you wholly tell when ASUU will resume its strike without students purloined in the struggle. In this case, how the Union may get back at government should the court ruling prevail dims hope in its own peculiar ways.

The first hypothesis of vengeance has been suggested by the President of Academic Staff Union of Universities, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, when he recently laid this example before journalists:

And the question I will ask before I stop; if the court force[s] the lecturers to go to work tomorrow, which type of teaching will they do? That’s the question. If [the] court force[s] Nigerian academics, say “Go and teach against your will” just like the court forcing a doctor [to] go and treat a patient, how many of us will go and meet that doctor? That’s the question I will ask Nigeria…

Little or nothing need be said to anyone familiar with the rot in the education sector as to what is the implied meaning of Professor Osodeke’s analogy. But for those who may be remote from the wit, above is a subtle warning that heartless, negative surgical treatments await students from unmotivated lecturers. The sad reality here, in comparison, is that in most cases, patients have easy choices and alternatives, students do not. Or, to put it more factually, only a fraction of students – like tenth of thousands – can afford to switch learning institutions to evade the negative surgical treatments from unmotivated lecturers. CPGAs may be mudded and lives altered for the worse.

The second plausibility is a path the Nigerian public knows very well. It is that the ASUU strike is coming back. When is the next strike? After ASUU has honoured the ruling (if it stands) for a short while and the government has reneged on its promises as usual. Between the 9-month ASUU strike called off on December 23, 2020 and this one, there was only a distance of 13 months and 21 days; can ASUU wait that long again after being forced to call off its strike? Almost certainly not. How is the strike happening? In this same manner that has seen students spending two to three years in one class and five/six/seven years on a four-year course.

And such is the tragedy of being students in Nigeria’s public universities. Like the proverbial grasses that suffer battering where two elephants fight, here is yet a generation of Nigerians paying heavily for no offence but a thing as universally recognised and globally valued as access to good and uninterrupted education. Protests have been held in flurries, cries and tears have been shed from all angles but the two parties do not budge. When the fight is over (temporarily), as usual, students will each again be left with a baggage of dented wellbeing and lividness inducing economic and academic complications. The worst thing about this? No one will pay students for these damages.

TAOFEEK OLALEKAN ÒGÚNPÉRÍ is the Public Relations Officer of the Students’ Union of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He studies Literature-in-English at the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University.