Tariah Iwoba
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) yesterday began an indefinite strike action over the non-implementation of the Memorandum of Action (MOA) signed with the Federal Government.
The strike action which began with immediate effect, according to the National President of ASUU, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi said would cover both the Federal and State owned universities.
According to Prof Ogunyemi all entreaties made to the Federal Government to honour the agreement with the union fell on deaf ears and they have no other option than to begin an indefinite strike action.
ASUU strike over the years has robbed students of their time in the university. It has become a norm that students in Public Universities in Nigeria shouldn’t expect to graduate at the expected time of graduation because there’s probably going to be one strike or the other. When ASUU is not striking, NASU is striking. In all of these, the government has still not improved the educational sector in Nigeria.
Let’s look at 15 times ASUU has gone on strike in Nigeria and how long the strikes were;
- 1999 – 5 months
- 2001 – 3 months
- 2002 – 2 weeks
- 2003 – 6 months (ended in 2004)
- 2005 – 3 days
- 2006 – 1 week
- 2007 – 3 months
- 2008 – Two 1-week warning strikes
- 2009 – 4 months
- 2010 – 5 months, 1 week
- 2011 – 3 months (ended in 2012)
- 2013 – 5 months, 13 days
- 2016 – 1 week warning strike
- 2017 – 1 month, 6 days
- 2018 – 1 day and still counting…
In all approximately 37 months have been spent on strikes between 1999 to 2018. The average Nigerian graduate/university student in Nigeria is the victim in all of these.
One question: when will Nigeria get better?
