Is Technical Education finally dying?

I just can’t hide my disdain for strike actions in Nigeria, in particular. Behind the façade presented by the numerous unions as demands “for public good” is an underlying greed for more money and “welfare of their members”. Everyone goes on strike for all imaginable reasons just for an opportunity to sit down with high ranking government officials and negotiate their way to some phantom better life. How could there be a true better life in a vacuum? How could there be a better life when the generality of the populace is hurting and under the crushing weight of poverty and disillusionment? How could any union want to create a world where their members live an “ideal” work condition oblivious of the general state of affairs in the society? Every union in the public sector is either threatening strike or on strike or just completed a strike action. No one seems to consider what immediate and long term impacts this penchant for going on strike is causing to the nation. Yesterday it was ASUU; today it is ASUP and all the various acronyms that people have come to reckon with the suspension of the future of the youth and of the nation in the name of seeking for better condition and better funding which usually ends up as some increase in salaries or allowances of members of concerned union. And in a vicious cycle of greed, other unions embark on their own strike action after government has acceded to the “demands” of one. Every union wants to get a piece of the action in the inordinate overdrive for "more" at the detriment of a dispassionate analysis of the big picture in the interest of public good. Trade unions, originally designed to promote the essence of collective bargaining between employees and employers, have turned into some uncontrollable behemoth in the public sector. Shamelessly, their first demand is usually for full payment of salaries for period they have not worked; period they usually deploy for private practice and other businesses. There is no remedy for hapless students and their despondent parents or carers. The nation bleeds.

Meanwhile, I had expressed some views on strike actions in earlier blogs at http://uwomeze.blogspot.com/2013/08/strikes-in-health-and-other-sectors.html, and http://uwomeze.blogspot.com/2013/07/asuu-strike-endless-war-with-no-exit.html and these positions have not changed. This is an urgent call for some sense of community spirit in addressing myriads of issues affecting various public sectors. We cannot continue to deny our children the right to education, in the name of incessant strike actions, and expect any bright tomorrow. We need to see the connection between the youth idling away with no future prospect due to unending strike actions at the higher institutions and societal vices like robbery, kidnapping, insurgency and other forms of fatal extremism.

The polytechnics and colleges of education used to be the hub of technical manpower development for actual production and advancement in the real sector but today, what is left is a shadow of institutions only recognizable by dilapidated signposts. Their lecturers have been on strike for a period of almost an entire academic session and no one appears to bother anymore. The future of technical education in the country is uncertain and students have turned to the universities (which have not fared any better) for some elusive education in a society that is largely lacking community ethos and where “fight to finished” has permeated our psyche resulting into a generation of young people who lack essential skills in negotiating usual turns and twists of life. As a community we can only live to regret this collective negligence at protecting the right of the young ones to receive necessary education in achieving their potential to advancing the society. We may conveniently put the blame on “government” but there is no government but people, and in one way or the other we constitute this “government”. Individually and collectively, we could cut down on our appetite and ego and stem the tide of this dying situation, not only in technical education but also in other aspects of our community living so as to nurture a healthy society.