Oh, look. Nigerian universities are on strike again. Color me shocked.
You could set your watch to this stuff. Just as a new academic year sputters to life, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) pulls the plug. Their leader, Professor Chris Piwuna, called the two-week strike "inevitable." You know what else is inevitable? The sun rising, my coffee getting cold because I'm stuck doomscrolling, and the Nigerian government and its university lecturers getting into the same fight every couple of years.
This isn't news; it's a rerun. A terrible, low-budget show that everyone is forced to watch.
The government, for its part, is playing its role beautifully. It trotted out the same tired lines, urging "dialogue" while simultaneously threatening to withhold paychecks under the "No Work, No Pay" law. It’s a classic move. It’s like threatening to take away a drowning man’s bucket. The government claims it has made a "comprehensive offer" and is just waiting for the union to respond.
A "comprehensive offer." What does that even mean? Is it just a PR-friendly way of saying, "We re-typed the last offer that you hated, but this time we used a nicer font"? Has anyone seen this supposedly magnificent deal? Or is it locked away in a filing cabinet next to the government's plan for stable electricity? Give me a break.
A History Written in Broken Promises
If you think this is about one specific disagreement, you haven't been paying attention. This is the culmination of decades of bad faith. This is institutional scar tissue.
ASUU and the government have been in this toxic dance since the 1980s. They sign agreements—big, fancy documents in 1992, 2009, 2013—full of promises about funding, university autonomy, and better salaries. Then, those documents get filed away to gather dust. The promises evaporate. Trust erodes a little more. Then, a few years later, the union gets fed up, and we're right back here.
It’s like watching the world’s most depressing rom-com. The two leads keep breaking up and getting back together, swearing this time it’s for real. They have a big, public fight, make dramatic declarations, and eventually reconcile with a flimsy agreement. Meanwhile, the kids—in this case, millions of university students—are stuck in the middle, their lives put on hold, watching their parents tear the house down.
Remember 2022? An eight-month strike. Eight months. Students just sat at home, their futures held hostage while the two elephants fought. That one only ended because a court basically forced the lecturers back into the classroom. That’s not a resolution; that’s a timeout. And now, the bell has rung, and round two—or is it round twenty?—is underway. This ain't about just one missed paycheck; it's about a fundamental, systemic rot.
So who is ever held accountable when these multi-year agreements are just... ignored? Is there a penalty box for politicians who sign things they have no intention of honoring? Offcourse not.
The Only Real Losers in This Game
Let's be brutally honest. The government officials won't suffer. Their kids are probably at universities in the UK or Canada anyway. The senior union leaders, as frustrating as their situation is, have job security the likes of which most people can only dream. They'll be fine.
The people who get screwed are the students. The ones who saved up, who studied their asses off, who are trying to build a life. Picture it: a cavernous lecture hall, smelling faintly of chalk dust and stale air. The plastic seats are empty, the projector screen is dark, and the only sound is the buzz of a fluorescent light that someone forgot to turn off. That's the sound of a future on pause.
This strike is just a "warning." A two-week appetizer before the main course of indefinite industrial action. ASUU strike: Nigerian university lecturers boycott classes - BBC This is a bad situation. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of cyclical incompetence. Everyone is posturing, everyone is digging in their heels, and an entire generation's education is being treated like a bargaining chip.
Then again, maybe I’m the crazy one for expecting anything different. Expecting a system that has failed consistently for 40 years to suddenly fix itself seems… optimistic. They expect us to believe this time will be different, and honestly—
What's the endgame here? Another court order? Another flimsy, doomed-to-fail agreement signed at 3 AM after an all-night negotiation? How many more academic calendars have to be torched before someone, anyone, decides to actually solve the underlying disease instead of just slapping a band-aid on the symptoms?
And The Students Get Screwed. Again.
Let's cut the crap. This isn't a "dispute." It's a hostage situation where the kidnappers and the negotiators are both reading from the same tired script. The only people with no lines, no power, and no say are the ones tied up in the back room: the students. Every single time this happens, their degrees are delayed, their job prospects dim, and their faith in the very concept of an "education" system withers. It's a national disgrace, played out on a loop.
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