On ASUU’s constant strikes

It is longer news that ASUU has embarked on industrial action following the failure of negotiations with government. ASUU strike has become a cankerworm eating deep into the education sector.

Nigeria’s education sector has over the years been grappling with many challenges, thus the call on governments at all levels to declare a state of emergency in the sector has continued to gain impetus. A multi-frontal approach is required to tackle the various factors militating against the achievement of the nation’s educational objectives.

The Federal Government and other levels of governance in our nation, including the various agencies, must collaborate to arrest the ugly trend in the education sector. Are we serious about our educational sector? When will the Federal Government and stakeholders think out of the box of industrial action affecting Nigerians students? When will the government meet ASUU negotiations?

Government and ASUU have become players on opposing teams, dribbling student toying with their lives and future. The poor standard of education in our country is a direct mockery of the huge annual budget voted for the sector, it is very clear that the desired results are not being seen and this should bother every one of us.

Meanwhile, both negotiators representing each side failed to compromise to avert another nationwide strike. In all sincerity, our nation’s regulatory and monitoring agencies must urgently rise to the occasion in the furlough of their official duties to bail out our country from the current state of terrible debris of monthly strikes berating our pedagogy sector. We no longer need the drama of having schools everywhere whose products are half-baked; all we need is a rigid amendment of funding our varsities.

Nigeria is ripe for structural measures and policies for the enthronement of sustainable acquisition of quality education and one of the surest ways of achieving this positive target is to weed out those identified as rocking the boat of our educational progress and corporate integrity. It is quite horrendous that the ASUU syndicate does not consider the well-being of the Nigeria students.

The question is that who is to be blamed for the chaos our education sector finds itself in? How can we reinvigorate our education sector? How do we avert the industrial strike in our education sector?

ASUU needs need to be self-innovative and quick-witted at this time, it needs to sensitise and learn new deals, unlearn anachronism and relearn new strategy for engagement in this current century. A situation where all the universities go on strike at the same time and paralyse education is very offensive. It needs to get smashing with transforming the system of governance in academia; this is catastrophic censure that it has to fight for not to be calumniating the deplorable education sector which needs to be restructured. Hope we would be free from this menace inundating our education sector.

Okanlawon Uthman.