The Nigerian Universities And Their Annual Holiday -By Fakinlede Pelumi

When you gain admission to higher institution of learning in Nigeria, it has now come with mix feelings, a feeling of joy that you finally get to be a student of a university out of the millions that wrote jamb and the thousands seeking admission to the school which offer you a chance, another feeling of not knowing whether your four years course will end as four or more because of the annual holiday called ASUU strike.

Every year, the Nigerian Universities lecturers thanks to their union have being able to coin an unpredictable holiday for themselves, unpredictable not because it won’t come but because one don’t know when it will occur whether the beginning of the year or mid or ending or whether it is twice or once or whether it will be indefinitely or warning but the holiday must always come.

Anyone who cares will like to ask what is this holiday about? And the answer is money. Money is what makes the lecturers lock down school indefinitely. They don’t strike because the Nigerian Universities are in poor condition, they don’t strike because they are no modern research equipments in the schools, they don’t strike because their graduates don’t get the jobs after spending years in schooling but they do strike because of paychecks.

I have done more than one convocation ceremonies and during the ceremony, the graduands will be said to have been found worthy in learning and character and I asked by which parameters and who. Is it by the set of lecturers who only are learned but not with good character or by another medium if I may ask. I remembered that I have been sent on an errand to get sexual enhancement drug for a lecturer and I have also seen a lecturer telling another who was romping a student to wait and get to the guest house and this same person will strike just got the paycheck not the work.

Nigerian Universities lecturers should learn to stop thinking about themselves and think about the students and jobs. I am not saying they should not fight for their rights but every Nigerians students have seen their fight to be meaningless and selfish. The Nigerian Universities are not in good shape and it is retrogressing yearly and the men at the place only think about their money.

Most Nigerian students have to be their own supervisor as the supervisor the school alloted to them is either not helping or busy. These same men who fight the federal government for money are the same persons who run to private Universities to lecture thereby hindering their proteges from working in both avenues.

The federal government should first fix the schools and do everything to make these incessant holiday cease and the Nigerian Universities lecturers should please think more of their students and job.