A lot of anger has been expressed over a certain foreign graduation which was shared on social media. My take is that the graduation and the ongoing ASUU strike are among the elements of a vicious circle which our public unversity education has become trapped in.
It may not please some to read this but what I have seen over the years is that strikes in the universities is the significant push factor which popularised the flight to private and foreign universities by the children of wealthier Nigerians rather than a fall in standards. Some of us are old enough to remember attending public universities with the kids of the high and mighty. For all the years that Prof Jibril Aminu was minister of education and petroleum resources, his son remained a medical student at the University of Maiduguri. The Abacha kids, Kano royal princes and countless children of the northern business elite were there as well.
Of course, the strikes have their legitimate causes too. Our uncontrollable population increase means that more and more universities had to come on stream and government commitment began to falter in a major way. Unfortunately, this government neglect has been made more convenient by the departure of the rich kids, which made political leaders and top officials not to have a personal stake in the universities anymore. In other parts of the world, the lack of a personal stake does not necessarily lead to the neglect of one’s official responsibilities. But in ours, the personal stake of the elite is everything. That is why many of our states have built airports before modern bus parks; the personal stake of the leaders lie in airports not bus parks, which a majority of the population uses.
So we don’t only have the current strike to resolve, we also have a vicious circle to break.
