In Nigeria, almost all higher institutions of learning are closed because the lecturers are on strike. This issue has been a major discourse all over the country and yet there is no solution in sight. Hapless students are at home, having no academic activity to engage in except sleeping, eating, walking aimlessly and engaging in other non-profitable time-consuming tasks. This is indeed disheartening.
According to Fafunwa (1977), education is conceptualised as, “The aggregate of all the processes by which the child or young adult develops his abilities, attitudes and other forms of behaviour, which are of positive value to the society in which he lives.”
Also, education is the greatest weapon that can be used to change the world. In a country where education is toyed with, underdevelopment is certain. No wonder this country has not reached denouement.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike which kicked off on February 14, for an initial four weeks is now in its sixth month. How long shall the innocent students endure this waste of precious time? Are these sets of people after our comfort? According to Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, the President of ASUU, the latest extension of the strike was done to grant government breathing space to cogitate and hearken to their calls by doing what it is expected to do.
An idle mind they say is the devil’s workshop. Those political merchants, as the 2023 general elections are approaching, may exploit the students at home to partake in thuggery.
Some students had calculated the age they would become university graduates, but with the wave of the incessant strikes, their mathematics has been rendered incorrect. Some might have reached 30 years, which will deprive them the opportunity to embark on the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.
It appears the present administration has failed to keep its promise of providing quality education to the citizenry.
My advice to Nigerian students as the ASUU strike continues is to utilise this period to venture into learning vocations like tailoring, hairdressing, barbing, carpentry, graphics designing and painting.
Also, we should disallow those desperate candidates from bamboozling us with the pennies they usually distribute during elections. Let our fundamental right to vote be prudently exercised.
Posterity will judge and history will never be fair to those who see nothing unsavoury in destroying the plans of the students.
Olayode Inaolaji wrote from Oja Ajagun, Ogbomoso, Oyo State.
