EDITORIAL: NAMDA and CONUA :Varsity Lecturers With Slavish Mentality

 

 

The university is the hub of knowledge and strategic exposure. Most modern civilization are known to have emanated from the university. It is the place where different schools of thought exist but all of them have a thread holding them and that is purpose, strength and achievements

At the period when the universities were established for the first time in Nigeria, everybody alive had a new experience. An experience of nobility and pride in the human personality. The Universities put an end to class phobia. Anyone who attended a university became aware that he had a reason to be alive and he didn't come to this life to live for another person

The consciousness that knowledge brings is a likely reason why the university lecturers have  become the single most active voice in demanding for Justice anywhere injustice is perceived. When the record is checked, it is the intellectuals who take the war to the camp of an oppressor. They never lay back and watch anyone cheat another.This is what the university made out of human beings

Outspoken students' leaders, well groomed and grounded by their mentors who are university lecturers, are always brimming with fire when they smell injustice anywhere. 

It is on record that students led campaigns and riots against bad governance and injustices in Nigeria. Several of them paid the price either by being jailed or even killed by overzealous state actors. However, one underlining principle in the existence of any university is for Justice to be done to everyone at all times.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is the umbrella body that holds university teachers. It is both a labour and professional union. Through ASUU, the university lecturers are able to make, project advocacies and even provide social services

However, ASUU has come to be more associated with strikes, resulting from disagreements with the federal government over unpaid benefits. It would seem that ASUU has gone on strike more than any other labour union. The reason being that lecturers are brilliant and people like this will seek for only the best for the system. They also have great value for themselves and their learning and this is why they will not fail to ask for commensurate remuneration.

This has been the biggest pain of successive governments; that is contending with the intelligentsia. One thing that is obvious is that the state of universities is woeful, in terms of infrastructure and research. Stories abound of how universities do not have classrooms sufficient  to hold students during lectures. In countless situations, hundreds, if not thousands of students crowd themselves in small classrooms for lectures. In this situation, it is almost impossible for the students to learn; even the teachers cannot do much to aid the students' learning.

How can anybody claim that we have universities when in most of them it is almost impossible to do research. Research efforts are always frustrated by lack of adequate funding. The expectation is that universities should be the hub of research, such that industries will mow depend on their research to know what the market wants and how to produce them. In this aspect, our universities have failed woefully. Many of our graduates don't even know anything about research any longer. They copy previous research projects, when it is time to do projects as a prerequisite for graduation and that is truly a shame.

The quality of teaching and learning has so badly dropped in the universities, such that today there are instances where a graduate can not write an application for employment. Some graduates cannnt even express themselves in simple and correct English Language. These are the products of a poor university system.

The Eyes Portal Newspapers is saddened that there is no Nigerian university among the first one hundred universities in the world. This is why the Universities in Nigeria have not only lost international respect but are also not able to attract international scholarship and foreign students

The shame of the Nigerian universities is why ASUU has been in the trenches for many years in order to make succeeding governments pay some attention to the universities and the lecturers. 

In the view of The Eyes Portal Newspapers, the exact outlook of systems that were failing in the educational sector and their managers were quite are the primary and secondary schools. The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has been silent and atimes afraid to speak up over the falling standards of education and that is why there is now a total collapse of the system. The rot in the primary and secondary sections of Nigeria's educational sector is synonymous with a disaster. School infrastructure and didactics are at the Lowest ebb. Most children who go through the public education system learn next to nothing. They finish basic school and move to the secondary school and remain totally unprepared to face life because they are completely illiterate

The politicians have overcome this stage of schooling in Nigeria with unequalled oppression. It is a total failure but this doesn't affect them, rather, they and their cronies have benefitted more from it. They have established private primary and secondary schools which are heavily patronized because majority of people ( even those struggling to make ends meet) don't want their children in public schools.

This is what they are about to transfer to public universities but for the boldness of ASUU that has consistently fought and hard too to ensure the government does not run down public universities. Already these politicians are setting up private universities and their intention is to make the public universities useless, make it impossible for the average Nigerians to get university education and raise the levels of poverty and illiteracy in Nigeria.

The current strike embarked upon by university lecturers has lasted for over seven months and we at The Eyes Portal Newspapers find this situation really disturbing because it has had serious negative effects on both students, parents and even the university lecturers who have not been receiving salaries for this period  of time.

The battle has been ongoing for the lecturers and all they seek is an improved university system. The government on the other hand has continued to justify its inability to meet ASUU's demand because of the ailing economy. They rub this alibi on the faces of the masses as if to say the people are responsible for the economic crisis. If anything, many of the politicians who are still in active politicking are the same people that have loooted the treasury. Added to this is the fact that they are still stealing the public money. They are getting richer, destroying the system and desiring that ASUU and other less privileged Nigerians should be punished while they keep mute.

This has been the fight of ASUU, to keep the university system in place.

It is therefore disheartening that certain lecturers could turn themselves to traitors to the point that they could buy into a government plan to set up splinter unions meant to distract the ASUU agenda for a better university system

We, at The Eyes Portal Newspapers view this as slavish and nothing resembling the universal, progressive nature of the university system

Those university teachers who have gone ahead to found two splinter unions- Congress of Nigerian University Academics (CONUA) and National Association of Medical and Dental Academics ( NAMDA) have made themselves willing tools in the hands of politicians that have not shown the slightest proof that the welfare of Nigerians matter to them.

CONUA and NAMDA members, if any such membership exists should know that like any other fight for freedom, this one will never be won by people without courage. And they have only proved that they are not and cannot be part of the struggle for a better university system.

The Eyes Portal Newspapers therefore calls on all genuine and courageous lecturers under the umbrella of ASUU not to give up but to continue the struggle for a better funded university system and better paid university teachers

ASUU members should close their ranks and not allow people without vision distract them.