a good job these days? The answer is no! In a country like
ours where our youths are daily faced with the Herculean task
of successfully completing a bachelors' degree under the
severest of conditions, this is what we have come to expect.
Our graduates, when they finally complete their academic
sojourn, enter the labour market with varied degrees; some
with a BSc, and others a B.A and what have you…degrees
that should make them proud. But, this sense of pride in them
soon diminishes when prospective employers disregard their
degrees and tag them 'unemployable'. What else could
possibly crush the dreams of a fresh graduate with more
ferocity? Unemployable? After spending more than the
requisite number of years only to come out of school and be
thus labelled. It can be disheartening.
This issue of 'half-baked' graduates churned out by our
tertiary institutions is highly demoralising on several counts.
Education at the tertiary level is swarmed with a host of
problems and challenges of which poor funding seems to have
stolen the spotlight.
However, other issues such as outdated curricular, poor
staffing, and even management incompetence have been
swept under the carpet. ASUU has stated emphatically that
they consider it unfair to continue to take the blame for the
poor quality of graduates, and this should rather be blamed on
lack of facilities, expertise, and the inability of our academic
institutions to retain bright minds; hence the need to take a
definite stand and fight for an upgrade in the academic
standard by way of a strike action.
If that was all there is to the prolonged strike action, one
might applaud their efforts, and even call them noble.
However, in the wake of recent developments, there is cause
for us to ask whom they are really fighting for. The fact that
funding is not as it should be does not in any way justify the
outdated curricular and obsolete courses brandished by many
government owned universities. There are cases of lecturers
resenting students who dare to question the status quo and
question the old knowledge harangued by their lecturers with
modern ones.
You see lecturers who have not bothered to find out the
current trends in their respective fields of study still dishing
out outdated facts as if it were the government's responsibility
to improve their own minds.
Today, even in the wake of federal government's agreement
to disburse funds to the universities, we must ask ourselves,
how much will really go into infrastructure and academic
learning? Must this union of academics that has shamelessly
resolved to cling to the breast of our motherland milk her dry?
The Minister of Finance, herself a daughter of professors, has
become a victim of their verbal assaults. These learned people
have forgotten so quickly that the allocation recently approved
for them is from a fixed pool. It is ludicrous to even think,
suggest or imply that a woman who has herself boosted the
economic productivity and opportunity for our youth to thrive
would want them either to sit back at home or to be taught
under the worst possible conditions. These name-calling and
placard-holding people, who should be an embodiment of
learning, however seem to think so. How have they helped the
economy when they themselves have held to ransom the very
thing that they claimed they want to fix?
What they deem to be a selfless act to protect the citadel of
learning will be no more than a show of their lack of
sensitivity to the plight of the Nigerian youths – after all, who
is the most affected so far by this shutdown? Certainly not the
lecturers who will still be paid salaries for every single month
they sit in their homes and leave the youths to languish.
ASUU must remember the saying of our fathers that when
you point one finger at someone, the other four fingers point
back at you. What are they teaching our youth? To wait for
the government to do everything for them? Shouldn't these
people set an example for us, challenging us to be self-reliant,
to think outside the box? I find it disheartening that till date
they have not mapped out creative and innovative ways to
generate funds. No thanks to our dear lecturers, half-baked
graduates flood the labour market and the value of a Nigerian-
based education diminishes by the hour.
While we bemoan the fate of the education sector, the poor
infrastructure and learning aids, let us remember that the main
object of our concern should be the students themselves. I
wish I had confidence in ASUU that the funds, once
disbursed, would be used for the very things they claimed
they are fighting for.
Are they nobler than the politicians and public office holders
whom they say should be burned at the stake for their lack of
competence and compassion? Only time will tell.
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