The confirmed stoppage of the salaries of the Nigeria’s university lecturers, under the canopy of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has obviously set the stage for the final and real battle of wits between the government and the lecturers.
The position of the two combatants signals palpable danger in the nation’s education sector, especially at the university level. The danger becomes more pronounced as the lecturers have made it clear that the stoppage of their salaries would not be enough to make them to return to work.
As a matter of fact, for over three months now, the Federal Government and the nation’s university lecturers have connived, by default or whatever, to put students, the nation’s bubbling youths at home, away from the pursuit of education.
Of course, the two sides would give you good reasons why they think they are on the right path, but they may be shying away from the wise saying that two wrongs cannot make a right, or in this case, two blind rights are adjunct to dangerous fall.
What has actually come out so far from this long drawn face-off is the reality that the nation’s education is sinking. This is even besides the fact that before the strike, the university education had lost a lot of its clouts and relevance to the nation’s developmental needs.
The present and future generations of Nigerians would certainly not pardon whoever, out of commission or omission, let avoidable battle to degenerate into an eclipse or the fall of university education.
Everyone involved in the collapse of the university education as a result of the ongoing face-off between the two sides, even including those who are supposed to speak out but keep mum because their children are not in the Nigerian universities would, in one way or the other answer for their stubbornness, levity and big-headedness if not before men, but before nature and, of course, before God.
In other words, if there is any time the nation’s opinion leaders, traditional rulers and other well-meaning people with nationalist credentials should rise beyond political sentiment and regional cleavages to bring this unfortunate muscle flexing between the government and the lecturers to an end, it is now.
