Africa is a continent where animal stories are sometimes told just for sheer entertainment. Most times the stories are told to children. But behind such entertainment are wit and didactic lessons. Let me share one such story: “One day, in the animal kingdom, the he-goat had diarrhoea and discharged its excrement all over the barn and the entire barn became messed up. When all the animals sat in judgment, they unanimously agreed that for its crime the he-goat should be given a severe blow, at which all the sheep roared with joy and jubilation. Three months later, the ram also wreaked great havoc in the barn. With its powerful horns, it tore the roof of the barn apart; leaving all the sheep and goats without a shelter. At judgment, the animals decided that the ram should be kicked, at which all the goats in the animal kingdom had a good laugh.” Lesson: misfortune is common to all.
Now, let me go away from the animal kingdom and pluck the fruit of my story.
The federal government has over the years treated the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) monstrously. From military regimes to civil regimes, it has been the same drama of sham, indifference and disdain. Promises are made but not fulfilled, negotiations begin and stop, only to begin again and stop. For the past three decades, no Nigerian leader has dealt with the ASUU-govt agreement seriously, sincerely, honestly and honourably. From 1992 to date, the rot in the university system has continued unabated. From 1992 to date, the university teachers have embarked on several warning strikes and sometimes indefinite strikes to press the Nigerian government to tread the path of honour by respecting its promises.
Lamentably, the major stakeholders in public universities, parents and students, do not understand the reasons why public universities have been the target of government animosity. The reasons are many and varied, and for now they are becoming perfectly clear. One, the university is a place of intellectual workers whose primary duties are to research, teach, engage in community work, seek, find and tell the truth at all times, even at great hazard. Two, it is only the intellectual that has the capacity to put Nigeria first, to love Nigeria, to insist that education is a right and not a privilege. Three, it is only the intellectual that has faith in the capacity of the people to change their lives, to demonstrate that people are subjects and not just passive objects of development, to insist on certain minimum professional ethics and democratic principles, to reject a society based on corruption, to reject the rule of fear, to reveal that the children of ordinary peasants and workers have a right to free education, to insist that it is the primary responsibility of any responsible government to provide education for all its citizens. One can go on and on and on. But over and above all, it is the duty of the intellectual to criticise the policy of privatisation of education and the whole programme of looting and plundering of our commonwealth.
It could easily be perceived that almost all ASUU strikes in Nigeria are connected to one, if not all, of the reasons I have enumerated.
Again, it is important for all Nigerian citizens to realise that in Nigeria, as in other parts of the world, our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous battle between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those forces determined to dismantle it. It is these two forces that are in conflict every day and everywhere. They are with us in schools, in offices, at the market, in the churches/ mosques and even in our homes. In simple terms, there are two classes in society: the rich and the poor, the ruler and the ruled, those who pull and those who are meant to do the pulling. On the other side of the divide is ASUU a union made up of a breed of university scholars who are bright, confident, original, honest, and whose simple lifestyle is a stunning contrast to the dominant imported culture associated with Nigerian leaders who are the oppressors. In other words, ASUU is the only body in Nigeria that fits the honest, anti-imperialist intellectual who is armed and prepared to fight, in a certain measure, for the elimination of injustice and the mass participation of the people in the ordering of public affairs. But unfortunately, Nigerian students and their parents do not seem to understand ASUU and its struggle. For them, ASUU is an intransigent, strike-prone and insensitive union. It is for this reason that many stakeholders in the education sector (especially students and parents) have consistently refused to show sympathy and solidarity with ASUU. When we look back, we discover that in the 1970s and 1980s Nigerian students fully identified with ASUU’s struggle because they knew that such a struggle was for the general good of the education sector. They knew that such a struggle was meant to confront tyranny, they knew that such a struggle was for the liberation of the poor in society. But today we don’t seem to have a vibrant union of Nigerian students. What we have is a group of young men and women balkanised along all the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. What we have is an association of young men and women who are acolytes of the political class. But more painful is the fact that what we have today is a generation of young men and women without focus or vision, a group of young people given to modern vices like drug addiction, sexual abuse, cultism, examination malpractice, debauchery, hedonism and shenanigans.
Who takes the blame? As a country, Nigeria, has continued to persevere under the burden of bad governance, political charlatanism and, most painfully, the deleterious role of the political class. And the reason for this is simple: for the past three or four decades, those who are charged with the duty of guarding public patrimony have deliberately abrogated their responsibilities; those who occupy positions of power are parochial, insincere and incompetent; those who are voted, or who rig themselves, into power say one thing in order to get into office but do the opposite once they get there. The Nigerian nation has continued to travel on reverse gear because its journey is bedeviled by untruths, deceit and thwarted dreams and desires. Honesty, honour, truth and humanistic sympathy have all but taken leave of the ruling class and the citizens have been reduced to mere playthings in the hands of the rulers. One thing is clear: there is a deliberate plan by the Nigerian ruling elite to destroy public universities and this fact is evident in the number of private universities owned by members of the ruling class or their cronies. There are more than 120 private universities competing with only about 62 public ones. How many Nigerian parents can afford tuition fees in private universities?
And here is the big irony. A time when tuition fees in public universities was less than N50,000 and many indigent students in Nigeria could not afford it. Some dropped out of school. Many missed their examinations and other academic activities on campus. It is no longer news that the present regime has not only removed fuel subsidy it has also compelled public universities to introduce tuition fees. It is also apparent that the present socio-economic realities in the country are becoming unbearable. In some federal universities the new tuition fees is about N250,000 or more. Turn everywhere, some aggrieved students have carried placards in protest on many campuses. Many universities have re-opened for academic activities but the students are yet to resume studies because they cannot afford the new charges. The huge irony is that many parents are supporting the protests led by their children. But the action of the student-protesters has raised a number of questions. Where were the students and their parents when ASUU embarked on a series of strikes to compel the government to behave more honorably? Was it not the same students who poured invectives on ASUU members during the last but one strike saying that ASUU was an insensitive and callous union? Was it not the same students who were urged by a former Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, to take ASUU to court for keeping them at home for too long? Was it not Nigerian parents who accused ASUU of unnecessarily keeping their wards at home? Many questions could be asked. But again, let me conclude with the proverbial wisdom from the animal kingdom: ASUU is the he-goat, while the students and their parents are the ram. May we always remember that life is a wheel and misfortune is unstable. In the words of Sophocles, the Greek tragedian, “No one should count himself happy until he is dead free from sorrow.”
Jeff is a professor of comparative literature
