Beasts of No Nation - Negotiating Education???

Sayo Aluko

protesting nigerian students & the Minister of Education, Prof. Rukayat Rufai

I love my country, Nigeria, and so, the saddest news I've received thus far in this year 2013 is that, for the umpteenth time in the nation's nascent democracy, its tertiary level of education has been grounded by yet another industrial action - that “brain-drainy” and  cancerous disease generally known as ASUU STRIKE,
or better still, "ASUUStrikoma".  More sadly, to think that this strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities' (ASUU) has lingered into its seventh week without any plausible reprieve, leaves one with one conclusion and a prayer. - 1) we are being ruled by brute cold-blooded beasts, 2) O God, let thy Kingdom come!

It is an overstated truth all over the world that sound education is the bedrock of sustainable development in any country or government that has genuine intentions as touching governance. Oh, this fact is just too clear that it needs no much talk at all, even to the blind; and while the whole clamour by ASUU has been woven around one major theme, that is, - more funding for education, it doesn't come with ease to believe that this principally important stance is being endlessly negotiated (by our government). I've had to pinch myself to really view through this beast-like insanity and ask myself, "Who in this world still negotiates the worthiness of sound education? Who? "

Having in mind that a major bulk of education's challenges are offshoots of poor funding, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in its wisdom recommended that each country should allocate a minimum of 26% of their yearly budget to education. While smaller, less buoyant and less endowed countries like Ghana (31%), Cote d'Ivoire (30.0%), and Uganda (27.0%) have all even surpassed this benchmark, my beloved country has dwindled from 11.13% in 1999 to an average 9% in 2012. Dear Nigerian, this above has remained the main crust of these recurrent strike actions that have successfully plagued our youths' and country's future with fatal and crippling convulsions. From avoidable delay to deplorable infrastructure, from half-baked to non-baked graduates, from sub-standard to no-standard curricula, from crime susceptibility to the festering of cultism, etc, the debilitating effects of poor funding are quite visible for all to see; and it takes only a  "beast" of leaders to allow such malaise to linger till now.

Hopes were raised in late 2012, when the federal government (FG) resolved to reach the 26% education allocation benchmark in the 2013 budget. And yes, they did, just on paper though, as it is noteworthy that that same 2013 budget just went through another "roforofo" amendment in the seventh month (July) of the same year (with mere 5 months to go), coupled with an unsurprising and extremely poor implementation rate; thus, making the strike action an unavoidable and conceivable one. Na Naija na, no be today!  Brute Beasts!

                                                                    

These cycles of ceaseless negotiations have continued for God knows how many times in recent years all with its attendant melodrama and shortcomings, but, still without a lasting solution, and I believe this is simply because the challenge has always been wrongly perceived, especially by the FG. It is such wrong perception that has led to the summing up of the serious challenges of education and their solutions merely as "ASUU's Demands"; this wrong assumption totally undermines these real challenges and also dwarfs them. And, it is known that any problem/challenge wrongly perceived (either deliberately or otherwise) and undermined can never be thoroughly solved, - this thus clearly explains the recurrent nature of the strikes.

It depicts a regrettable height of myopic puerility on FG's part to have till this day threaded the path of christening the country's education challenges as "ASUU's demands" and treating them as such. Truth is, what has been termed as "ASUU's demands" is every sane Nigerian parent's demand, it's every sane student's demand, and in fact is every sane nation's demand, and so, wrongly giving it a mere association's face already undermines the challenges and as such, is wrongly perceived. In the true sense, these solutions have never been about any association whatsoever, they are rather about the successful thriving of both the Present and Future of the country, with sound, qualitative, veritable, and un-halted education as a major determinant factor, they are about true nation building; only if truly perceived so, can a lasting solution be brewed and installed to forestall strikes’ recurrences.

The in-house cracks within ASUU itself, (typified by the withdrawal of some schools from the strike) plus ASUU’s error of headlining their clamour with calls for increment in allowances both further demean the elephantine nature of the true challenge and thus ultimately fuel negotiation unavoidably. In as much as they have a spot in the picture, the ASUU is just a front and never should be taken by the FG as a negotiating partner. There weren't supposed to be any negotiation in the first place, right?  Yes, none, this stance of education spending in any country (should be) a non-negotiable one.

It would be a fallacy to think that the primary and secondary tiers of education in Nigeria aren't as much affected by the damaging effects of poor funding and consequential industrial actions as the tertiary tier; in fact, I believe they're the worst hit. I visited a host of them recently, and asides the "normal suspects" of deplorable infrastructure and sheer non-conduciveness, I was gobsmacked by the readily palpable ounces of apathy and dispirited efforts in both teachers and pupils alike, so much that I almost mistook the supposed schools for mere playgrounds. I saw how another effect of government's education abandonment has eaten deepest. Public schools that we as youths of today were proud to attend back then, have now lost their glory days, the verve is gone, and that thorough system erstwhile primed for formative knowledge acquisition has lost its place for mere rigorous daily routines as of today.

Today's proliferation of private primary, secondary and tertiary schools is neither a result of innovation, evolution nor progression; rather, it's a staining marker that glaringly attests to government's mammoth failure at seeing/taking education as her primal obligation, and also not an object of negotiation. We shouldn't be proud of such proliferation.

It remains a fact that the bulk of Nigerian students whose parents pay taxes deserve more than perennial strikes that malignantly under-utilise their worth, also a fact that they can't afford to patronise religiously-laced businesses in the mould of private universities (actually, they don't need to); a fact that the Ivy-league schools which these "beasts in power" send their own wards to, are actual products of yearly non-negotiated billion-dollar inputs and endowments from their own governments ( For example Harvard University got 32 billion dollars in 2012 as endowments alone; wonder why they're a pride?).

While being a student of pharmacology, I learnt that for a drug to be deemed potent and effective against any ailment inside the body, it must bind well with a particular receptor inside such body. Lesson is - in as much as we hope that government gives the "drug" of more funding to treat the malaise of education, ASUU, in form of the lecturers and teachers alike MUST possess trusted blueprints that will serve as "receptors" to make the funds work. This too is non-negotiable.

I think it's high time that the unsuspecting and hapless students of Nigerian schools in general, got saved from this terrible Scylla and Charybdis betwixt that poor funding and strike actions have put them. Now is the time when the government sheds away the beast in them and for once, dropping platitude-ridden negotiations and rightly/boldly taking up the obligation of rescuing Nigeria's education.

Until then, O God, please, let thy Kingdom come!