ASUU Strike: an Endless War with no Exit Strategy

WHO defines Health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. (Emphasis mine)

Has anyone, therefore, bothered to find out the mental health challenges and social disruption that ASUU strikes impose on the youth of this nation? Do students have any rights to uninterrupted academic calendar?

We grew up with the name “ASUU” evoking imagery of militancy, disruption of academic calendar, forced holidays on students and parents, and general uncertainty on career and future of university students in Nigeria. That was decades ago. Unfortunately, nothing has changed about ASUU and their mode of engagement with government till date.

What do we usually get from ASUU strike? University lecturers rightfully lament about the poor state of our universities and the educational sector generally. And following one failed negotiation after another, with successive governments, strikes are called.

What is this strike? Services/teachings are withdrawn and our universities become a ghost town.

Parents and guardians toss from one side of the bed to another thinking how to manage the emergency of their "jobless" children.

The future of the students is put on hold indefinitely.

The government in place appears to move on to the next item on the menu as the effect is apparently not directly felt.

Their children are either in private universities or studying outside of the country.

ASUU members, hitherto moonlighting in private universities or in some other endeavours, could now devote the entire time for their private pursuit. After the strike or even within it, ASUU still expects all salaries be paid in full!

What is the morality in all this? How can we possibly run a nation in this way? The waste and missed opportunities that both government and labour unions appear to condone is alarming and unsustainable.

The future of the nation and a leadership generation is short-changed, and a dicey and uncertain future awaits the rest of us.

ASUU needs to rethink strategy. If strike becomes "inevitable", ASUU should well mobilize their members, civil society, ordinary citizens and even students to join in public protest, nationwide, to bring to the attention of the world the precarious state of our education, and the reasons they will not continue to “aid or abet” such dangerous decline by pretending all is well. But this is not what ASUU does. Indefinite strikes are declared and there is no obvious plan for public activities to continue mounting pressure and drawing local and international attention through public protests/demonstrations. How many ASUU members truly believe in these strikes enough to participate in public protests and risk their convenience or lives for the passion of sound education in this country? That's why ASUU's strike could last up to six months or more and the nation simply "moves on". The thriving private universities are a testament of some bypass mechanism.

The ultimate victim is the ordinary students and their parents, and a public university education on auto-pilot that may give way to some disastrous landing any time. The implication is far reaching with the turnout of poor quality graduates in medicine, engineering, law and other professions. The people and the nation as a whole suffer damages as a result of a decline in standard of care from the very foundation.

Meanwhile, with the decline in purchasing power of Europe due to economic crisis, the increase in oil production quota from the Middle East, the discovery of oil in other countries (especially in Africa), and the Americans weaning to some clean energy, oil money will soon dwindle down drastically and the states and federal government of Nigeria may soon be unable to maintain the present over-bloated recurrent expenditure which mostly goes into paying salaries (real and ghost) with little productivity to show for it.

It may not be too long before workers in the public sector will have to make a choice between a pay cut and downsizing. Already, some indirect pay cut has been introduced by some state governments in the name of higher taxes.

We should carefully consider that time has changed. Our population continues to grow and there is little and inadequate infrastructure to support such growth. Every sector of the nation, be it health, education etc, must take a holistic view of the situation to be able to know how best to engage in our collective struggle to achieve a nation state we can all be proud of.

Making demands for a desired state of affairs is not out of place. However, without due consideration of the inter-relatedness of the problems and needs in the larger society, it may amount to chasing shadows to insist on narrow demands. Yes, "agreements" may eventuality be reached and signed but we'll still get back to this vicious cycle again at the point of implementation which usually reveals the weakness of such agreements which might have been reached at the exigencies of the moment without some deeper thoughts and strategic planning taking into consideration national developments goals, in all honesty and selflessness, by all parties involved.

I wish ASUU good luck in this present venture but I sincerely believe that if anyone wants to know why this country, Nigeria, is such a sick giant, the answer will be found if as individuals we take the courage to look at a mirror.

We should strike against ourselves and honestly ask if we are truly working enough for the money we earn, and for the small privileges we enjoy (of course we still have so many complaints, no doubt). More importantly, we should ask ourselves how much we've utilized available facilities/resources in the best interest of common good. These posers are both for the labour unions and the government-both are driven by people; WE!

This is simply my opinion and this opinion does not in any way pretend to know all the ramifications or have all the answers. It is an opinion borne out of my personal conviction that we can do things differently, and that we can also modify our attitude towards one another and towards public cause. ASUU should urgently device an exit strategy from incessant strike actions. We must think out of the box, re-examine our tactics and rethink our strategy. Let’s give students and the public some respite!

ASUU is acronym for Academic Staff Union of Universities

 

Strikes in Healthsector: When Patient Care takes the Backseat

There is an alarming situation in our hospitals in Nigeria and some African countries. The ready use of strike actions by healthcare workers to settle industrial dispute has caused a big dent in public confidence. Strikes have become incessant these days; possibly reflecting a culture of militancy that has bedeviled our society. A closer look at the list of "demands" often reveals some self-centered pursuit. The big picture is often ignored and the patient, the very reason for our hospitals, is betrayed. Lives are lost. This is an ultimate failure by both the healthcare workers concerned and the hospital  management/government. The brazen manner patients are abandoned and the "contract of care" breached is unconscionable and shameful.  
I know a few things about dying and about the dead, and I know it is not simply a cessation of vital signs.

It is much more complex. It is an irreversible phenomenon that changes the lives of many people for ever.

It is a loss to an individual, a family, a community and the nation.It is not merely some statistics. The loss is not addressed by some "tests for statistical significance" because it is already 100% loss to all concerned. The loss of any patient's life is unacceptable and unjustifiable. Unfortunately, here no one is held to account.

It appears the public has been taken for granted and there is some misplaced sense of indispensability often exhibited by healthcare workers. I reckon this is our big loss.

And I think our loss is the gain of "alternative medicine".

Our loss is the gain of medical tourism.

Our loss is the growing loss of public confidence in healthcare workers and in our hospitals.

There is, therefore, urgent need to balance the right of a healthcare worker to agitate for some good working condition with the right of a patient for undeniable healthcare available.

Message from Aisha: The Plight of the African Child? We are All to Blame!

Aisha is one of my brilliant postgraduate students and she is happy to share her response to an earlier blog post. Her message is both inspirational and a call to action and applies across Africa as we count down to 2013 Day of the African Child on the theme: “Eliminating Harmful Social and Cultural Practices Affecting Children: Our Collective Responsibility”. Many thanks Aisha for the wonderful thoughts:

The way I have always seen it is that every Nigerian is accountable for what happens in, and to Nigeria. I am to blame, you are to blame, the ordinary citizen on the street is to blame, and everyone is to blame.

In 1999, I graduated from a public school, the Federal Govt College Ilorin It was one of the best of its times, academics, athletics, infrastructure etc. 5-6yrs later, my parents made my younger brother apply to the Nigerian Turkish College in Abuja (the federal schools were no longer good enough).

In 1999, there was no option for me; it was either ABU Zaria, or ABU Zaria. The question was only whether I would be admitted to study medicine in the prestigious university I had dreamed of all my life, since my father had attended the same university. 6 yrs later, my younger brother was admitted to the Nigerian Turkish Intl University, Abuja. The public universities were no longer good enough. If your parents had the money, they were even less appealing.
How am I to blame? What if I mentored an almajiri, fed him three square meals, and facilitated his entry to orthodox school, alongside his Islamic school, mentored and trained him to acquire a degree, is that not one person off the streets? Knowing that literacy begets literacy, he is likely to send all his children to school, probably mentor one person as he was mentored, and thus a cycle of literacy begins, yet I haven't done it. I have thought about it in theory but I haven't done it, so I am to blame.

How is the ordinary man on the street to blame? Last semester, during a visit to witness firsthand juvenile justice proceedings, one of the offenders, a 10 yr old boy had stolen a laptop, however as the judge asked the father some questions, it became glaring there was NO parental supervision at all. Parents were divorced, child was with the father, and father worked from morning to evening and hung out with friends at night. Child didn't go to school. The father was to blame for not wanting a better life for his child, not making efforts to safeguard the future of his child.

How are professionals to blame? They go on strike for the wrong reasons. Doctors, teachers etc. they go on strike because of five naira, but do not lend their voices to topical issues.

Back to my song, it has to start from one person. We have to brighten our corner and guide someone across the bar.

What if the community came together to fix the school in that picture? They wouldn't lack artisans who could do it voluntarily. They wouldn't lack those who could chip in a kobo or two, for goodness sakes, they could construct a blackboard by themselves; they could construct desks and chairs with their own hands.

I am not even blaming the government now, because Nigeria's problems have far outweighed the capacity of government alone.

I think we as a people can do it, if we are focused, if we don't think of the personal or monetary gains, we can turn the lives of millions of children around.

We usually see community service as Oyinbo-ish, but I think given the right ingredients, we can do it and personally I think it is the long term solution to most of our current problems.

The Plight of the African Child? We are all to blame!!!p

Whom do we blame this time round? What hope for the Future?

In Soweto uprising of 1976, thousands of black school children marched in protest against the poor quality of their education. Many years after "independence" (and we are now "in charge" of our own destiny) has there been any change? The situation has gotten worse, in most cases, for the African child. Shown in the pictures above captured by Punch Newspaper photographer less than  a week ago were school children of Idimu Community Primary School at the heart of a State that brands itself as the "Centre of Excellence" in Nigeria. You could just imagine what would be going on in the non-"Centre of Excellence" States. This represents the fate of many public schools and the sorry state of Africa children in the post-colonial era. Our kids are getting very unfair deal considering the vast amount of resources available to nation states in Africa. Public school system, in most cases, has completely broken down and school pupils right from primary school level have found solace in cultism and other social vices in order to find some meaning to the deplorable condition around them. A few who can afford the prohibitive cost, send their children to private schools. One of my blog readers from the Northern part of Nigeria sent me a thought provoking comment on the pervasive "almajirai" syndrome in the North thus: "The issue of almajirai is a burning one up North, and I think it represents an end, on the continuum of child abuse and neglect. It also highlights the plight of the African child. Any negative thing you can think of, can be found in an almajirai population (poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, infections, infestations, substance abuse, conduct disorders, reckless sexual behavior etc). These same African Children (almajirai) are available as guns for hire, to perpetrate violence in the society. Our children and future generation are not safe if we don't make the continent a safe and conducive place for all children. Here is my own poser sir, The African Child..What Hope For The Future?"

Her poser captures the urgency of need for a collaborative action to save African children from a perpetual "life sentence" of abuse and neglect through generations. 

Whom do we blame this time round for the worsening state of the Africa child in a rich continent, where our "brothers and sisters" are now in power? 

Whom do we blame for the lack of basic infrastructure for care of children? 

Whom do we blame for the outrageous child mortality rate in Africa? 

Whom do we blame for prevailing malnutrition and failure to thrive in African children? 

Whom do we blame for abysmal standard of education in our public schools? 

Whom do we blame for absence of child protection services? 

Whom do we blame for churning out a damaged generation of child soldiers? 

Whom do we blame this time round? 

I blame myself. 

I'm ashamed by the pitiable state of the African child I see daily. 

We have betrayed our children. 

We can't afford to continue this way. 

It's our Collective Responsibility to make that much needed change in our little corners. 

The time is NOW!

2013 Day of the African Child: Is the Night Over?

As I prepare to give a talk at a forum being organized in commemoration of 2013 Day of the African Child on the theme, “Eliminating Harmful Social and Cultural Practices Affecting Children: Our Collective Responsibility” I could not stop thinking about the precarious state of the African child in the twenty first century. While a few African countries have made some effort at tackling prevalent cultural and social menace bedeviling the African child, most of Africa only pay a lip service to Child Rights. In 2003, Nigeria passed the Child Rights Act to domesticate the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The law, though passed at the federal level, would only be effective if also passed by State Assemblies. It has remained largely an "ink effect" on paper as most the States in Southern part of Nigeria that have passed the law are yet to put up any visible and modern Child Protection System as provided for in the law, while most the Northern States have not even bothered pretending about protecting "Child Rights" as the State Assemblies are yet to consider domesticating any aspects of the Child Rights Act despite pressures from the civil society. The impunity of this posture and the "dark night" it portends of any child in that part of the world, and similar setting, was evident in 2010 when a serving senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Ahmed Yerima, in the same National Assembly that passed the law just some years back, "married" a 13 year old girl! Indeed, the man who was old enough to be the child's grandfather actually "bought" the poor Egyptian child for $100,000 of a dowry! Meanwhile, under the National Child Rights Act, the legal age for marriage is 18 years. And to underscore the despair of the Nigerian child (and African child in general) and how impotent the law could be in protecting him or her against the tyranny of bestial calibres in the garb of culture, religion and inordinate considerations, the "marriage" took place at National Mosque in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria where the laws of the land should be illuminating every space of the city. The Nigerian State could not rise up to protect one child who represented the face of numerous children wailing in dark recesses in different parts of the country under the bondage of primitive practices which clearly put their lives, potential and future on the line. Female genital mutilation is still occurring unchecked in different parts of Africa and boys are still subjected to primitive and brutal rites of passage in some culture. Child labour, child trafficking and sale of babies are all "booming" with highly placed people involved. The justice system seems ill prepared and apparently uninterested in issues of crimes against children. We have attended to some cases of child sexual assault in which police officers are yet to show any interest in the forensic evidence collected. Meanwhile, if you check out the children of "leaders" in Africa and folks like Ahmed Yerima, their children are most probably schooling in the best of schools abroad or best of private schools within; well catered for and protected. On the other hand, an average public school in Africa is simply a disaster for whatever a school is meant to be. The conditions that necessitated the Soweto Uprising in 1976 are still very much with us in Africa and has gotten worse and more convoluted. The Day is yet to come for the Africa child. The gloomy night overshadows their destiny while government officials, on "special" occasions,  make speeches that are drown by extended squawk of vultures devouring our children. We can't continue this way and we must use the theme of 2013 to dismantle unfounded social, cultural and religious arguments that have so far been used to destroy the future of Africa. Our continent remains underdeveloped partly because our children have been stripped of dignity, and their souls entangled in conflicts and unresolved injuries inflicted upon them. It is, therefore, not surprising that African children usually thrive outside the continent where there is a system of Child Protection, and rule of law that applies to everyone irrespective of status, power or position. I'll lend my voice to the battle cry to save our children and save Africa. We must not underestimate the power of our Collective Responsibility. What are you doing?