ASUU vs FG: Our future is crying for help!

BY SAMUEL OLOMU

The leaders of tomorrow are crawling on the street of hopelessness, sleeping for hours with dashed hopes and dismayed by a voyage that seems not to end. While our mates whose parents could afford private schools are busy studying; we the greatest Nigerian students, the greatest Nigerian “gbogbogbo”, the greatest “gbangba”, and the over conscious “kikiki” are home like a suckling waiting to gulp the fresh milk from our mothers’ breast.

ASUU has embarked on a four-week warning strike since Monday 14, 2022 and at the expiration has declared a roll-over strike for another two months. Two good months of vacated classes and yet another two months of sleeping and waking; two months of a sleeping future. We are tired of this irony, dying education and resting government.

The failure of the government to implement the agreement it signed with the union has protracted this drama. Adamu Adamu, minister of education, claimed the government has already met key areas of demands made by ASUU; hence, it was wrong for the Union to extend the strike instead of suspending it. The show of shame by the education minister when he walked out on NANS on March 1, 2022, while the body was in a negotiating meeting with him in his office is clear proof that the federal government is wittingly abandoning what they are supposed to guide.

Regrettably, one funny thing about the whole saga is the fact that it is not easy to deduce who the liar is between ASUU and the federal government. Fine, if the federal government claims it has already met the demand of ASUU, then I think that should be clearly stated in viral news. It should be clear to our eyes because I do not think our media is dead. This strike, if not immediately called off, will have devastating implications on the education sector in the 36 states of the country and the federal capital territory. We call on both ASUU and representatives of the federal government to go back to the dialogue table and resolve their problems.

Wherever two elephants fight, the field suffers the brunt. ASUU is an elephant, the federal government is an elephant and we are the field. We are being shortchanged of our right to quality education as contained in chapter II, section 18 of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Education is crucial for economic, social and cultural development.

I wear a double cap. First, ASUU has nothing to lose; to some of them, it is a chance of reuniting with their families, a chance to rest for a long period and some of them will have time for their private businesses. In the same vein, most of the children of the people in government are for one reason or the other schooling in foreign universities, getting quality education. Then, how do you want a person who is never in your shoe to feel the ache?

The continued silence of the federal government on this matter is a useful mechanism for jeopardising the hope of a better future. I wonder why a bird kept in a cage will jump and sing for joy. The Nigerian students are tired. Despite different actions taken by the students, the NANS protest of Monday, 28 February, the Kano protest, the Ondo student protest; blockage of all international airports and major roads, our government is still unyielding.

ASUU and FG are two ends that will never meet. Even beyond the strike, no one seems to care about our tertiary education system which is gradually going to an abrupt ending.

What is the way forward? This is a question that requires a direct answer. But the answer is clear. Let the federal government pay up her debt. If this is not done, no fasting will do, no prayer will do, and in fact, nothing under the sun will do. Our future is crying for help. Education is falling; who will help us build it before it falls without remedy? Who will help us bridge this gap?

Olomu is an undergraduate and member of the Take It Back Movement, Lagos state chapter.