HOW TO SURVIVE AFTER A LONG BREAK FROM ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES
ARKORE WRITES is a blog committed to writing a positive narrative and helping her audience with quality information, we decided to find a way to help returning public university students gain their grounds back as they resume to school. In a Chat with a top OAU lecturer, we were able to achieve that. Let's go.
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Thank you for accepting our request to have you on board for a chat on HOW TO SURVIVE AFTER A LONG BREAK FROM ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES
ARKORE WRITES : Kindly introduce yourself sir.
LECTURER : My name is Dr Kehinde A. Ayoola. I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
ARKORE WRITES : ASUU strike lasted eight months, what can you say about the length of the strike?
Dr Ayoola:
On the length of the strike, eight months is a very long time to go on strike, which is very unfortunate. Nigerian lecturers have had longer strikes in the past; maybe nine months, but this one hit us really hard because we have not been paid our salaries since March 2022. This has had a deleterois effect on us and our dependants, especially school going children and our aged parents.
A sad consequence of the strike is the untimely death of some lecturers, not only here at Ifè, but in other universities nationwide. For instance, colleagues with serious health issue had a hard time paying for their health care; hence some of them succumbed to the cold hands of death. May God rest their souls. Some lecturers had serious challenges with their marriages because they were not able to take care of their families. Many lecturers who were undergoing PhD programmes, planned to go on sabbatical leave, oversee trips, conferences and so on were not able to go because of this strike. So the strike affected everyone, not just students.
As parents, we share in our children's pains who were idle at home for so long. Career and financial opportunities that we lost cannot be quantified. The strike affected us academically too because one was unable to concentrate when one didn't know what would happen the next day. The strike turned a university town like Ile-Ife and its environs to a famine zone. Business activities simply ground to a halt. Personally, my car papers and driver's license are long overdue and my car is long overdue for service. There are loads of financial challenges that I have been unable to meet. Even my dog knew that the times were hard. So, it was a really terrible experience for everybody. I can imagine how frustrated and depressed many students were for staying at home for so long. This was really regretable and I pray that it doesn't happen again.
One of the things that made the strike so prolonged is the fact that the Nigerian government is broke and, I'm sorry to say, bankrupt. I suspect the FG feared that if they gave lecturers salary increase, other workers would start making demands which they might be unable to meet.
Government workers could hardly make ends meet from salaries that have been eroded by inflation. ASUU is probably the only union whose members could go without salaries for so long. It has never happened to any other union in this country, so, ASUU should be commended for staying up for so long.
It is sad that the government resorted to playing divide and rule by granting license to a rival union called CONUA which exists mainly at OAU, Ife and no where else. The FG delayed for so long, playing games, passing the buck from minister of education to minister of Labour and setting up committee after committee whose recommendations they refused to honour.
ASUU couldn't have called off the strike earlier. Up till recently, there hadn't been any agreement at all with ASUU. In fact when they agreed at all, they were saying they'll give ASUU what it requested with effect from 1st of June, 2023, when the incumbent government would have left office and no longer in a position to honour any obligation. Nigerians should know their rights and they should demand it from the people they elect into power. If the government can take good care of the judges and legislators; paying them so well, even bandits are well paid by the FG, they have money to service the president's fleets of aeroplanes.
For instance, when the president went to the last UN conference, in New York, he went with about 100 delegates and they all logded in the best hotels in that country. So Nigeria can't tell us she is broke when it comes to lecturers' welfare. We all know how well they take care of the civil servants, they have a lot of benefits that they are deriving which is up to 10 times their salaries, especially senior civil servants, and we are also aware of a lot of wastages like embezzlement of funds here and there with impunity in the system.
The person in charge of the IPPIS embezzled 170 billion naira and nothing has come out of it and nothing will come out of it, so they cannot tell Nigerians that they don't have money to pay lecturers and even if they say that, we would not accept that from them, well that is that, we thank God for the way it has ended. It's unfortunate it took so long for them to resolve the matter.
ARKORE WRITES : As a lecturer with long years and deep experiences of many ASUU strikes, what are the notable adverse effects you've noticed when students resume on campus?
Dr Ayoola :
Usually after a long strike like this, students would have lost touch with scholarship. It's like when you abandon a car for a long time. The battery would run down, the brakes will be stiff and many other parts will malfunction. So students need time to return to academic mode. In view of the above observation, many students may underachieve in the semester examination or to put it bluntly, too many students may perform woefully.
The university authorities will adjust the calendar and the semester will be truncated. Instead of 13 weeks, we may end up having nine weeks. Exams will be rushed and this explains why there is usually mass failure and pathetic CGPA after long strikes. So students have to prepare to work extra hard, to meet up with the workload that is waiting for them.
Immediately we finish one semester, while the lecturers are still marking, we will be prevailed upon to start the next semester. So there will be delay in releasing results. After the second semester, we take an unusually short break, and then we go to the next session without the usual annual leave.
All this would take its toll on the lecturers and students in terms of insufficient rest and heavy workload.
ARKORE WRITES : How can you advise students on getting back on track?
Dr Ayoola:
Students must be prepared to be thorough and systematic in their approach to academic work if they don't want to fall victim of the rush and the truncated time table. We also need to be mindful of the fact that a session will be lost like those who are coming in, as fresh students for the next two sessions will have to be merged into one. One session will be scraped as it happened during the Covid-19 which is not good for anyone. It's going to be tough.
It's not likely that this kind of strike will happen again in next two or three years. No matter what the government does, we won't go on strike. However, people may be asking for early retirement; i.e. those who are old in the system may ask for early retirement. And many young academics would be looking for other opportunities elsewhere which has already started. During the strike, many of our young colleagues had left, they've gone abroad and more are still processing their papers because the welfare here is nothing to write home about. If a professor can earn up to $5,000-6,000 (USD) per month, even in other parts of Africa, but a Nigerian professor earns about $600 a month, that's 150 dollars a week, what's the point in waiting. This bad economy is not good for tertiary education.
Because the government is owing a lot of money to the World Bank, China and others, things will go from bad to worse. I don't see the economy improving unless the country restructures politically, creates employment opportunities for youths, and life is made better for Nigerian lecturers. The future is very bleak indeed.
Thank you for your time sir.
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About the blog:
ARKORE Writes (est. 2020) is focused on glorifying the literary creations of this age and to create sparks of hope through writing and other forms of artistic expressions.
This is great. Well done!
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