I don’t know whether I should
start this treatise by congratulating the Army of Nigerian students for what we
have collectively waited for-An end to the protracted ASUU strike, which at a
point, seemed like it won’t go shrivel, or whether to start by apologizing for
my deliberate use of the rather harsh adjective -‘Foolish’ which I must say was
not in a calculated attempt to drag traffic to this post and which I am
staunchly unapologetic to, irrespective of whose ox is gored. Not even after chanting my ‘wini mini mari
mo’, could I get a preference, therefore, I have debased the essence of whichever,
comes first, and would not congratulate us as our actions and reactions
throughout the eon of the strike is not even worthy of any approbation as the
irrationality and idiocy we displayed throughout the period was so towering that
a description of us as ‘FOOLS’ will only amount to a mere understatement or
sarcasm.
If there are two things
I have learnt or discovered as the strike reared its ugly head in the past six
months, it is the sad reality that Nigerian students, lack a voice. It is true
that there is an association called the National Association of Nigerian
Students (NANS) and respective Student Union Government’s across the 52 public
universities but it is not only melancholic but also calamitous that they scarcely
understand what it means and what it takes to occupy the positions they occupy.
They like to parade themselves as comrades, but it is doubtful they truly
understand what it takes to be a comrade. For them, it is about status as
little or nothing in their actions suggests that they understand what makes a
man a comrade.
Secondly, I realized
that many of us do not know that we are the major stakeholder in the Education
industry. And because of this ignorance, the leadership of ASUU and the Federal
Government (FG) has jointly reduced us as ragdolls and pawns in their game of
chess. We are thrown here and there at will, yet we sit bewildered like jjc’s and
do nothing.
I never supported the leadership of ASUU in
their strike because right from the genesis of the strike, I have always been
of the opinion that, with the level of funding our universities have gotten
before the strike, they should have performed considerably better than they
were even before the strike. I dismissed the lecturers as only being after their
pockets and not in the interest of me and you as they like to posture about.
Even when woken up from their slumber and asked why they have vacated the
classrooms, what they will tell anyone who cares to know is: we have vacated
the classrooms in the interest of students and their future. How Cheap does
‘Talk’ sell these days in the markets anyway? Well, if they chorus that, like
our nursery school rhymes, it is because we allowed them to use us as a
bargaining tool. We allowed them to use us as securities in the Money Market.
But despite not endorsing the strike action, I
saluted them for one thing-they kept at their guns, they would not put their
hands in the plough and look back, they know what they wanted and they knew how
to get it and at last they have gotten it, using us as leverage or collateral.
But did we ever care?
Not too many of us
cared. I noticed that from our attitude and temperament throughout the period.
For many of us out there, it was even an opportunity to hustle and make some
money. The strike can last as long as it wants, who cares? We were more
interested in making some fast money and buy the latest gadgets in town or
catch up with the latest fashion trends so that whenever the strike is called
off, we go back to our various campuses and show off. It is immaterial what we
have lost; it is immaterial that we have been at home for 5 or approximately
six months. The money we have made is enough consolation. I even heard some say
that the strike should not be called-off until January so that they can collect
get their December salaries or round up their December ‘runs’ or hustling.
“Who
goes out to the streets to protest these days?
Who has that time? Protest for
what? Are we in the Arab world? Is this Egypt? Some asked, and others will
come out bold to tell you, “When the
Umbrella body of the students has been compromised?” Fair enough, the
umbrella body of the students has been or was compromised, but are we not the
people whose mandate they have? Are we not the ones who gave them the authority?
What did we do to show that they have been compromised and make our voices
heard in seeing that a Vote of no confidence is passed on them? We abruptly did
nothing but took to the uncensored Social Media to engage in ‘Skelewu’ dance competition
and got trapped in the net of the crazy Entertainment industry while our future
hung in the balance.
The leadership of ASUU
has shown each and every one of us what can be achieved through a committed struggle.
They have shown us what unionism is all about and that if our umbrella
body-NANS has compromised or sold out, they have not. If the NANs have
forgotten their Mission and Vision Statements, they still memorize theirs like
the Lord’s Prayer or the ‘Ash hadu al lahila ha illahu wa ashadu anna
Muhammadur rasul lullah’ and what they have to show for it is the 200 billion
Naira the FG has deposited in a CBN account and the immediate payment of their
arrears of salaries in the last 5Months. But is that all? No. they also forced
the government to put pen to paper that none of the members of the union will
be victimized for taking part in the strike. A lot right? Well, it is nothing
too difficult to come by if we too have shown the same level of commitment that
they have always shown but the only difference is that we don’t care. The
gentility of a lion they say is not stupidity, but you know what? In our own
case, it is more than stupidity; I like to call it ‘Suffering and smiling’ in
the words of the High Life Music sensation, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Accepted, the strike
has come and gone, and many of us are now hustling to do our last ‘runs’ to get
the latest BlackBerry, or Android device, or to get the latest wrist-watch or
the recent shoe in vogue. And for those of us who are privileged to drive cars
in the campuses; to get the latest rims for our wheel or even change to a
different car entirely. In all these hustling and bustling, permit to tell us
that before we foolishly pack up our bags and baggage to return back to school……,
Let us remember to hold
our so-called lecturers accountable. I can see many of them are already
reveling and carousing that it is victory at last. Why not? Are we not told
that “All is well that ends well”? Not even the death of Professor Festus
Iyayi, the sacrificial Lamb and the greatest victim of the strike will dent
their ululation. They now wait for their phones to beep so that their arrears
of salaries will come in if at all, they haven’t been paid as I write. I can
only imagine how the fast approaching yule tide will be for them. No doubt, it
will be a special one with so much money around to spend. I think I even have
to pay my HoD a visit when he least expects so that I can get my own share of
the ‘Awuf Money’. Yes, awuf it is, because they did not work for it and our
Landlords in school will not take the five months strike as an excuse not to
pay their arrears of rent. As they will always tell us, “My house is not a
Hostel”. But as they celebrate, they should remember that ‘awuf dey run belle
o!’
Back to our discourse-
Before we foolishly return back to school, let us make sure we hold these men
and women who like to wallow in contrived sanctimoniousness as though we do not
know that our universities have become ivory towers of sleaze and a corruption
rate that is second to the cash cow-NNPC, accountable. We must let them know by
our actions and ‘body Language’ (apologies to Waziri Tambuwal) that the era of
parading themselves as ‘tin gods’ is over. That just as they claim to have
fought for our interest and the overall interest of the Education sector, we
want to see them live it by walking their talk and not just mounting the
rostrum to feed the gullible masses lies and make-beliefs which are in conflict
with what they exhibit in our campuses.
The era of selling of ‘hand
outs’, asking our female students for relationship and some even taking them in
to sleep with, for marks in return is over, the era of collecting sums of money
from students called “sorting” in exchange for marks or upgrading their c+ to a
B, or their F9’s to a D. The era of not coming for lectures for a great part
of a semester and coming at the nadir
stage, to dish out handouts that are fraught with unpardonable grammatical
errors is over, the era of victimizing students who refuse to be cowed into
silence is over. The dark years of collecting wads of expensive textile
materials to supervise projects of final year students and a whole lot of other
shenanigans these so-called lecturers exhibit in our campuses without
confrontation, should be a thing of the past, but then that is if only we want
them to be.
How do we do that? We
can start by speaking out at any giving opportunity when faced with such
treatments by these Jobbers who call themselves academics. Some few weeks ago,
the polity was heated up by the irascible and grumpy act of a sitting-governor
for assaulting a widow somewhere in Benin, Edo state. We all saw what became of
that act. We all saw what became of the said governor- Adams Oshiohmole. How he
was forced to stoop so low into sharing a cup-of tea with Mrs. Joy ifije and
her son and even offering her a Job- not forgetting the 2 million naira cash
given to her, all in a bid to atone for his rather being consumed by his
emotions and trampling on the person of a citizen who might have voted for him
2 years ago at the polls. Well, while we all scampered for a space to comment
on the act, I was more concerned with what can be achieved through the Social
Media and most especially what we, as students can achieve if we explore the
same window. God bless whoever recorded
that scene and had it posted to the internet but will we be bold enough to
record ours and put them across?
Before we foolishly get
back to school, let us know that our being referred to as ‘half-baked’
graduates the moment we are churned out, is because by our omissions and
inactions, we want to be regarded to as so. We must make it a point of duty to show
that most, if not all our lecturers are also ‘half baked’ and ethically wanting
by speaking out at the slightest aggravation from the university authorities tailored
to our collective injury. We deserve the right to be shown our scripts after
collation. We reserve the right to apply for a re-marking of our scripts when
we are not satisfied with how they say we have performed without any victimization
from any quarters as they have demanded from the authorities. We reserve the
right to be shown transparency in their dealings and in the day-to-day running
of our campuses. Who says, Students cannot go on strike? Just in case many of
us have forgotten, our lecturers who have now taken strike as a medium to press
home their demands, went on strike in their own days as students for one reason
or the other. One of my lecturers will always tell us how they once went on
strike because they were not served warm/hot water to take their bath and so
many other trivial issues that led them to vacate their classes to the extent
that they were pleaded with to return back to their classes. And to know that
all these took place while the Military were in power, overwhelms my mind.
We must not foolishly
stand bemused while they parade themselves as demi-gods of some sort. I have it
on good authority that many of these lecturers don’t mark our scripts or even
when they manage to do so, hardly read through our scripts to see where we have
hit the point and yet still have the temerity to refer to us as ‘half-baked’. If
the bread is consistently half-baked, should not the baker be bundled out in a
bakery firm worth its salt and that is committed to customer satisfaction and
profit maximization? This is a food for
thought I guess for the authorities, but before we foolishly return back to our
campuses, we should learn to keep the ‘Big Brother’ eye in George Orwell’s 1984
on our lecturers.
They have fooled the
Government and masses into believing they are ‘Holier than thou’ and it is our
duty to hold them to their words. The Social Media is a turf we can operate on,
to air out the spoils in the system to prove to the government that it is not
just funds that sets a nation’s university system apart as I have preached in
several articles. It takes a whole lot of commitment from those whom these
funds are bequeathed to. How they manage it to see that they make the best out
of a little. But since our lecturers in their muddled brains thinks it is all
about money, we must watch with eagles’ eye to see that they kowtow that lane.
Before we go back to
school, we should be mindful of the fact that we have sat at home for 5-6
months and less is what we cannot settle for. The only way to make these wasted
months count, is not by the few thousands, many of us may have saved and the
new gadgets we have secured for ourselves, but by making sure our lecturers
change from their bad-ways and see that we are baked well as graduates so that
the labour Market will not have to condone with ‘half-baked’ graduates
so-called.
There are series of
social media Outfits committed to this struggle to wit: @OccupyNaija,
@AsuuProtests, @EiE and a host of others. You can always blow the whistle
through these twitter handles and it will be taken from there to a logical
conclusion and justice served while your anonymity is guaranteed. All you need
to proffer is the name of your institution, the lecturer involved in any shoddy
dealings and the department in question and you would have just done your part.
By these, we shall get them on their fours and let them know that ‘Big Brother’
is now watching them.
I will like to stop
here for now. The ball as the game stands, is now fully in our court or our
half. How we choose to play, is a different thing entirely. Whether to play to
the gallery or put the ball in our opponent’s net to make them know that we are
now wiser than we use to be and as they have always thought us to be is a
question of choice. We do not necessarily need the Umbrella body of the
students-NANS, as they have eaten the proverbial porridge even in our campuses.
Whether we like it or
not, we are stakeholders in the education sector, and our roles in making it
better cannot be overemphasized. A lot in making it work lies in our hands, we
should not only stay and watch others play ball and even go ahead to use us as
a wager; we should get our shorts, roll our pants, off our shirts and join in
playing this game. If anything, to see that it is determined in our favour for
once.
I have long started
playing my roles to this cause however little, whether we choose to play our
own roles or not, is beyond me. But just before we foolishly return back to
school.
Follow me on twitter @RayNkah
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