By Emeka Alex Duru
Unless, as it is said, the carriage of a messenger depicts the mindset of a principal, President Muhammadu Buhari should be sufficiently ashamed of the conduct of the Minister for Education, Adamu Adamu, in his meeting with the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). A video clip of the meeting and the Minister’s haughty demeanor, remain a bad publicity for Nigeria and the Buhari administration.
The students who were protesting the continued face-off between the government and members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which has paralysed academic activities in the nation’s universities, had taken their anger to the minister’s office, clutching placards demanding a quick resolution of the crisis.
After some remarks and few questions by the students, who were led by the NANS President, Comrade Sunday Asefon, the minister walked out on them, dismissing virtually all the issues raised by the youths with a wave of the hand.
That was arrogance and impunity taken too far by a public servant who is supposed to be answerable to the people. Adamu should have been relieved of his office by that crass indiscretion, in a saner clime. But then, you may not need to go far to locate where the minister derived his crude guts from. Recall occasions in his early days in the office when the president had made it a mantra to talk down on Nigerian youths, in some instances, describing them as being lazy. Adamu and other office holders may have read his lips at such moments and have been acting accordingly.
During the last strike by the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), the Labour Minister and incidentally, a medical doctor, Chris Ngige, toed the ugly path by reminding the doctors that the country had more medical personnel that it could do without them. There is this rootless entitlement mentality that the president and his aides exhibit in dealing with other Nigerians. They behave as if the country owes them by putting them in positions of authority.
What seems to be the only medium of communication by the government and its functionaries, is command and control. When the late Afro-beat legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang in Beast of no Nation, that he had not known any other country other than Nigeria, where officials of the state ridiculed other citizens as being useless and undisciplined, many did not reason with him. Situations have eventually shown that the ebami eda, was prophetic, after all.
But the country seems to have been boxed to a corner by the sheer unresponsiveness of its leadership class. The current youth crisis, is one that may have defining consequences, if not carefully managed. It is like a time bomb that may explode on our faces.
The leader of the protesting students in Kano, Yazid Tanko Mohammed, captured the situation succinctly. “ASUU has been going on strike since 2009, and students are always the victims of the strike. We are not benefiting from the strike. Instead, we are always at the receiving end. Imagine, a programme that is supposed to last for four years will take up to six years. And the one meant for five years will take up to seven to eight years”, he said. Just as the students suffer the disruptions in the academic calendar, their parents bear the brunt of keeping them in school, endlessly. And the society loses the most.
The current strike began on February 14 because of the failure of the Federal Government to renegotiate the agreement it signed with ASUU in 2009 including adequate funding of the system, replacement of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), with the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), as the payment platform in the university sector, among others.
The teachers insist that IPPIS has never worked in any university system anywhere. Among its drawbacks, they say, is that it will shut the doors against foreign scholars, contract officers and researchers needed to be poached from existing universities to stabilize new ones.
But the Federal Government insists that the payment system is for transparency and neither intended to trample upon university autonomy nor designed to subsume the university into the civil service.
These are issues that can be resolved with openness of mind and sincerity of purpose by the two parties, hence the position of the students on the parties to find a speedy resolution to the crisis. For emphasis, the students are not taking sides with any of the gladiators but rather seek a way out of the logjam. For such patriotic young men and women to be snubbed by a minister of the federation, shows the premium government officials place on service to fatherland.
Nigeria has become a classic case of where the leaders do something same way repeatedly and expect a different result. It has never worked anywhere. The logic, rather, is that one reaps what he sows. The #EndSARS protest of 2020 by the youths against the highhandedness of the police and sundry incidences of poor governance, was enough to have taught some lessons to the authorities. The impacts of the protest still resonate in areas it affected. The mismanagement of the protest by the government leading to the exercise being hijacked by hoodlums, account for the rising insecurity in many parts of the country, today. Anything nearer to that experience, may pose more challenges to the nation.
What the government is doing by appearing not bothered while the obviously frustrated Nigerian students take over the major highways in protest to the ASUU strike, is unwittingly exposing the innocent ones amongst them to what is not in them. The consequences of this exposure may be dire for the country, if care is not taken. The maxim is that the youths are the strengths of a nation. Other systems harness their youths. But Nigeria toys with is youths and gambles with her future.
Treating the youths with levity, remains the bane of Nigeria’s development. We may take it or not but when we talk of the rising insecurity in the land, occasioned by the ravaging insurgency and terrorism in the North East, banditry in the North West, intermittent clashes in the North Central, kidnapping and ethnic nationalism in the South West and South East or militancy in the South-South, all boil down to the youth unleashing their anger on the nation that has abandoned them for a long time.
Former Minister for agriculture and President of African Development Bank, AfDB, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, came close to saying so when he observed in his recent lecture that 40 percent of Nigerian youths are jobless, adding that they are discouraged, angry and restless, as they look at a future that does not give them hope. Estimates of the country’s population put the youths at 60 percent. Take away 40 percent of this figure as being unemployed and angry, the danger ahead becomes glaring and more frightening.
.• DURU is the Editor of TheNiche Newspapers, Lagos. (08054103327, nwaukpala@yahoo.com)