Zaid Ayuba Alhaji
Dear youth, the Academic Staff Union of Universities remain the only hope of the common Nigerians, since 1978, ASUU shielded you from what you may never know!
Yes! There we’re strikes in 1988, 1992, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2017, 2019 and 2020 and the current one of February 2022, but all are basically for the good of the nation.
Every year, budgetary allocation kept going little above and below 6.7 % of the total budget. Imagine this meager percent to the education sector of a population above 200-300 million people!
Every time I see someone siding with the Government while blaming ASUU over strikes, I begin to wonder, what if they happen to be in power?
Kano Central Senatorial District: Who the Cap Fits?
Look at how Governments generally treat Educational facilities compared to the Turkish furnishings they give to their legislative and Executive offices!
Those responsible for avoiding the lingering epilepsy in the Educational sector are comfortable sending their pampered children to study abroad, with a reserved ‘ready made’ jobs waiting for them, while you’re here under strike. Remember, their foreign certificate is valued by our agencies than yours!
The same beneficiaries of the pas educational scholarship are the same squeezing our education today. The same generation that got everything freely in school including Chicken, free uniform, Milk, laundry services etc are the ones tossing us around!
One painful truth is, Many of the custodians of Education in the Federal and states may be having Private schools and Universities. When the vigilante is the perpetrator; how then do you arrest the crime?
All of our Federal Universities have less than 25,000 lecturers while the State Universities have less than 16,000 Lecturers. Egypt alone have more than 60,000 Professors and teaching staff, just in their 24 public Universities!
The students population in Nigerian Universitas require nothing less than 200,000 lecturers that are well equipped and well paid, but all Nigerian students and graduates knew some lectures with over 500 students!
We are Nation full of potentials but challenged by misplacement of priorities. How do you expect our Educational system to work both at the Federal, states and local level when our Ministers and States Commissioners and other appointees on Education are free to own private Schools?
Above all, the leaders of our Nation prefer to send their children to UK, Malaysia, India and U. S for degrees, even when our youths are kept at home for months without hopes; how then do you blame ASUU for the strikes? Is it that you don’t understand how men care less on what doesn’t affect them or you so much love to defend the politicians in government?.
Let me remind any selfish writer in defense of the Government, while blaming ASUU, all the Children of the President never schooled in Nigeria, Fatima Buhari went to BUSINESS ACADEMY, Stratford, United Kingdom.
SAFINATU BUHARI went to University of PLYMOUTH, United Kingdom; (Now Arden University, U. K). HALIMA BUHARI went to University of Leicester, U. K. YUSUF BUHARI went to University of Surrey, United Kingdom. ZARAH BUHARI went to University of Surrey, United Kingdom. HANAN BUHARI went to RAVENSBOURNE University in England.
How then will 001 knows the history of ASUU challenges? Before him, all or most elected politicians are used to sending their children abroad including senate Presidents, Speakers of the House, Cabinet members Senators and all those with the financial strength!
The Vice President equally send FIYIN OSINBAJO to Warwick University in the same United Kingdom. Even the Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission send his kid to University of Aberdeen United Kingdom, while Students at home continue to be hopeless, struggling through B. Sc to PhD, spending 7 years in a 4 year course.
In conclusion, i recommend that all Nigerians especially the youth must come out in “solid solidarity” to the Academic Staff Union of the Universities. It is time for us to do it all with them, civil and public workers can all lend a hand, religious leaders, traditional rulers and I mean everybody is a stakeholder in education!
The struggle is not about ASUU, it is about the future of Education in Nigeria which all of us benefited from. It is about our future generation, since we all benefitted from public Education as the most biggest dividend of governance to common men; then it should be an owed duty to protect it at all cost.
Zaid Ayuba Alhaji
Write from Kano. A public affairs analyst, commentator and expert in public policies and administration.
comradezaid6@gmail.com
