As the current strike by Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) enters its sixth week, concerned citizens of all walks of life have continued to appeal to both the Federal Government and the striking Lecturers to yield grounds, in a spirit of give and take, to end the ugly impasse. Many people have described this indefinite strike which has paralysed Nigerian’s tertiary education as ”one strike too many”. This is particularly so when one recalls the havoc a similar strike in 2009 wrecked not only on the education sub sector but on our entire socio-economic system.

Nigerians still remember how students and lecturers spent the second half of 2009 outside their lecture halls and research laboratories as the ivory towers remand shut down at the orders of Asuu.

This time around, it is the same reasons: University teachers pressing home their demands for better remunerations, agitating against poor infrastructure, poor conditions of service and against Federal Government’s penchant to renege on collective agreements. What the country is now witnessing seems to be a return to that notorious era of strikes when all university activities nationwide were put on hold and the gates of these citadels of learning under lock and key.

The question on every lip include: why should the country be subjected to such agonizing experience with its attendant socio-economic consequences? Is it not a shame that inspite of Nigeria’s wealth and loud claims to civility and development we cannot keep our youths in school for one full uninterrupted academic year or more?  Why do wealthy Nigerians prefer to send their wards abroad for tertiary education including to less endowed sister countries like Ghana? Is it not because their education system is stabilized and they do what they ought to do at every point in time? Where were the Federal Arbitration Panel and other stakeholders before and after the ASUU warning strike? Why did they not intervene promptly to nip the strike in the bud?  The questions are endless.

The irony of it all is that oftentimes, due to the indifference of government, lecturers are forced to announce their suspension of industrial actions without achieving the purpose for which they set out.

When lectures resume under such conditions, the lecturers display low morale and so can hardly give their best to their students.

The havoc wrecked on Nigeria’s academic system and programmes by this state of affairs is better imagined than described.  They include rushing of the lecture topics to catch up for the time wasted.  Each time there is a strike the morale of lecturers is plummets, their passion to teach and research drops, thereby compromising the quality of their inputs.

These incessant strikes are responsible for the inability of most graduates of our universities to defend the certificates they parade.  The economy will continue to suffer as long as the people on whom so much have been spent cannot add value to the system.  These strikes also account for the reason degrees from Nigerian universities are not regarded as anything outside our shores; causing our professionals to be subjected to tortuous screening tests to get into foreign organizations.

While we urge the ASUU to bear the interest of their students in mind and limit their demands to justifiable ones, considering that government has other pressing needs to attend to, we call on governments at all levels to lead by example by keeping to collective agreements.  It is only then that they can justifiably implement the No work No pay provision of the Labour Law.

We consider the present ASUU strike as one strike too many, we call on the various stakeholders to double their efforts and deploy every resource at their disposal to put an end to this risky waste of the nation’s human capital and future.

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