I am an ardent supporter of the ongoing strike by the academic staff union of universities. Though affected, I believe their demands shouldn’t be subjected to negotiations but to implementation of an agreement reached in 2009. If the government agreed to fund the sector to an extent, she must not fail on its promise like she is doing now. Not minding who was at the helm of affairs when the agreement was reached, government is a continuum.  Good as it is, it’s the same government with a minor in-house re-arrangement and a late leader (May his soul rest in perfect peace). The development of Nigeria’s future leaders is not negotiable and must be given upmost fiscal priority and commitment by government.

Beyond this fiscal war, what happens?  What happens after government wakes up from its insensitivity and decides to inject the demanded sum into the sector?  Should lecturers and obviously more affected students head back in victory pretending low funding is all that has limited the growth and competitiveness of our tertiary education.  As the arguments of the warring sides have made us to believe. Who has taken time to look at students’ welfare and security as par with funding for the growth of the sector? In my opinion, maybe students should also boycott classes and press demands on welfare and security grounds. Though this time, the target of the agitations will not be the common enemy but the lecturers.

I feel an agitation by students might also work against their lecturers. I might just convince you on that. I quite agree that funding goes a long way in developing our tertiary education but what about students’ welfare? Who is looking at that angle? What will all the funds for research and infrastructure achieve if students are insecure and see their lecturers as mountains to be summoned. The growth of the education goes beyond a well set class. What purpose will that serve if the man or woman to impart knowledge is a tyrant. Please pardon my generalization, but it could be accepted if more than 70% of our lecturers from students’ perspective are harder than their choice courses of study.

So! To the questions am trying to raise with this piece. Of what use will the funding be if a lecturer teaches with a preconceived idea that no student can have an A in this course? Probably because he or she didn’t achieve that as a student. Of what use will the funding be if female students wont pass until they pant down for randy lecturers? Of what use will funding be if diligent and hardworking students won’t make better grades than students who cash up their grades? What use will the funding be if lecturers are mostly intolerant and cynical?  What use will the funding be if lecturers bask happily in the euphoria as been regarded as wicked and insatiable by students? Of what use will the funding be if reporting a lecturer’s impunity to the school management is shooting one’s self in the head? Probably you now see why students’ peaceful agitation against lecturers is necessary. Arguably, It will serve the same purpose as what ASUU’s demands will serve. Educational development.

Our educational sector has a lot of great potentials and this is obvious at the rate Nigerians students are making incredible achievements in diaspora. There are quite a lot of cases of Nigerian students who couldn’t make second class grades in their undergraduate days in Nigerian universities but become best students in postgraduate studies abroad. Did they just realize their potentials when they got to these foreign universities? Or there was an enabling environment and selfless teachers who helped develop whatever inbuilt potentials they had. Ethics guiding the teaching profession have indeed been shunned by our lecturers and there are no measures in place to curb their excesses. Thereby creating a victimized and insecure students body on our campuses. While our student affairs offices are nothing other than just management puppet offices.

The National Association of Nigerian Students will have to wake up from its political toned operations and looked inward into our institutions to actually fight a cause of Student welfarism. Students across Nigerian public universities must like the University of Lagos creative arts students take an enough is enough march against lecturer impunity on our campuses.  Students must understand their rights and limitations within institutional parameters so as to relate optimally with lecturers. They must not be scared to speak up against acts of humiliation and harassments by lecturers. On the other hand, lecturers must play the parent figures to students in school and position themselves as role models to be emulated by students. They must create an enabling environment and a welcoming posture to aid students’ access to them. Only when all these have been put in place will infrastructural funding achieve the required effects in our tertiary education sector.

Government also has an important role in all of these. Measures and avenues should be put in place for students to lay their allegations against lecturers or management without fear of victimization. Just like our lecturers demanded the anti-victimization clause in their agreement with government, students must also demand this clause. A student must fear no repercussions of reporting a lecturer.

Conclusively, the ministries of education and justice must be easily accessible in our schools so our lecturers won’t be the Judges of their own cases just as they presently are.  The ministry of education must also create measures to adequately monitor how effectively the monies to be pumped into the educational sector are spent to achieve infrastructural development.

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Adelaja Oriola Oriade