No time is ever proper to resolve overarching questions of
development in a polity like ours where the leaders demur at every crucial
moment to grapple with the challenges of nationhood. Thus, in the hands of our
leaders, what should be a laudable process of envisioning becomes travestised
as a trajectory of disguising their inability to confront head-on national
challenges. Or why do our leaders have the penchant for setting national goals
in a time frame that is perpetually elastic? Remember? Under varied rubrics such as “Housing for all by 2000
AD” and “Vision 20:2020” our leaders have
found a way of not coming to terms with national crises that would eventually
haunt us or the subsequent generation.
Now, the official refrain is that
this is not the best time to talk about restructuring. As they flounder for a
pretext under which to avoid confronting the issues that the need for
restructuring has thrown up, our leaders have not been so fortunate to think of
offering the agitating citizens the anodyne of “Restructuring in 2050 AD.”
For our leaders, what should presage talks about restructuring is the
restoration of economic buoyancy, a goal that would remain elusive as long as
our leaders continue to see their political positions as means to
self-valourisation. The unimpeachable argument that the economic misery of the
people was sired in the first place by the absence of a restructured polity
holds no appeal to them.
The leaders have stretched further
their expectation of acquiescence on the part of the citizens. Now, they want
them to avoid like a plague the need to raise questions about the health status
of President Muhammadu Buhari. We have been told repeatedly that it is none of
our business that the president has been hobbled by ill health and he cannot
discharge the responsibilities for which he was voted into office. We are told
that it is his private affair as his treatment and other corollary expenses
incurred by the unending stream of visitors to London
Over the years, successive political leaders at the national and state levels
have evaded a decisive response to the crisis bedeviling the nation’s
educational crisis. From the primary to the tertiary levels of the educational
system, there have been problems that require an urgent attention but which
unfortunately have been ignored to the mortal peril of our development.
Teachers are poorly rewarded for their services. They do not have the right
facilities to work with. Research is frustrated by a disruptive electricity
supply. The libraries are stocked with outdated books and journals. And yet we
want our educational institutions to compete with their counterparts in other
parts of the world.
Clearly, the teachers’ strike may
disrupt students’ studies, prolong their stay in the universities and exact a
heavy toll on the already beleaguered finances of their parents. But instead of
pillorying the university teachers we should be grateful to them for jolting us
from the obliviousness of our educational crisis.
They could have chosen the easy
option that since the government and the citizens would not understand their
plight, they should respond in the same measure. In that case, what may
compensate for their ill-treatment by the nation is their giving desultory
services that are commensurate to the disdain which the society has for them.
Instead of acknowledging that our educational system is in a crisis and
considering the best intervention, some people who are befuddled by their
privileges of closeness to power would dismiss the strike as political. They
would say that it is the enemies of the President Muhammadu Buhari
administration, most likely members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and
their sympathisers that are hell-bent on unspooling the government and its anti-corruption
fight. But we should not just dismiss the teachers as embarking on a strike in
order to get better salaries. Even if they were fighting for better salaries,
they are justified.
Here is a nation that pays its
political leaders so much despite an economic recession but can only afford to
give its teachers crumbs from the political leaders’ tables as wages. Political
leaders pay themselves severance benefits while they are still in service and
put in place huge pensions for their post-service splurge. Yet, we expect the
teachers to put in their best.
Notwithstanding that there is a
recession and government revenues are now depleted, this is the best time to
bring this matter of the educational crisis to the table for discussion. If the
matter was not resolved when there was so much money to steal by our political
leaders, it should be confronted now in the face of the imperative of the
prudent deployment of the few available resources. When the nation’s revenues
are deployed in the appropriate places, there would be little or none left for
our political leaders to steal. It is the same leaders who say there is no
money to pay workers and pensioners who squander the Paris Club refunds on
themselves and the senseless building of new government lodges and
secretariats.
Our political leaders do not appreciate the urgency of a response to our
educational crisis because they steal enough money to send their children to
schools abroad. It is a tragic betrayal of national trust that our political
leaders who got the best of the country’s economy and educational system are
not eager to revamp their shattered fortunes. Now, they would be happy if Academic
Staff Union Of Universities (ASUU) does not alert the nation to the crisis in the educational system. Our
political leaders, who in connivance with our businesspeople have ruined our
public primary and secondary schools, would be happy if our universities also
crumble so that the population of their private universities can swell. Yet, it
is not all the citizens who can afford private university education for their
children. How can a parent whose minimum wage is N18, 000 send his or her child
to a private university where the tuitions range from N500,000 to N1 million
per session?
The government should not resort
to the quibble that it was not responsible for the agreement with ASUU. Nor
should it inflict on us the platitude that it has raised a committee on the
matter. This matter has been on since 2009 and the APC government did not come
from another planet two years ago; it was aware of the crisis. Why did it not
take the resolution of the issues that ASUU raised since then as a priority? If
the APC government had shown promise of effectively responding to the issues
that ASUU raised, it is not likely that the university teachers would have
embarked on this current strike.
The government should not give us
the excuse that there is no money. If the government can take loans for
projects that do not positively impact the citizens, it should go ahead to take
loans to fund our education as long as the problems are clearly identified. In
this regard, as a professor who understands the value of education to personal
development and national growth, so much is expected of the Acting President Yemi
Osinbajo to be sympathetic to the university teachers’ case. But this
government also has the option of responding to the ASUU crisis with disdain.
It can do this by leaving the crisis for the succeeding government as its
predecessors did.
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